Over-reliance on tourism is a long term tough problem

Some island economies are reported to be overly depend on tourism. It is a gift for these island economies to have such beautiful natural resources; however, it is also a burden for the further development. As tourism is the easiest way to generate economic benefits, these island economies, of course, use tourism to earn their first barrels. However, when tourism contributes a large portion to their economies, they limit their future development choices. Some development choices, for example, digging oil and manufacturing, are almost abandoned from their lists. These methods may create rapid economic growth but will damage the tourism industry. If these countries take such methods, their images will be damaged and their economies may experience a downfall in the beginning of their economy restructuring. Moreover, their tourism-dependent economies have very close correlation with the global economic growth. When the global economy is in a good shape, the tourism-dependent economy is also in a good shape and has no need to restructure itself; however, when there is a recession globally, the tourism-dependent economy could suffer more above average and badly need to restructure itself, the problem is there is no available funding for the tourism-dependent economy to conduct such an economic restructuring program. Therefore, a tourism-dependent economy is a very volatile economic structure and to reduce such reliance is a very tough and costly process that it has to experience an economic downturn in its early stage.