Turks and Caicos Islands

more costly; limited access to credit; and lack of familiarity with the technology to accept the
viability.
5.2.2. Management
Any action on reducing energy use and emissions of greenhouse gases has to begin with a review of
emission intensities, to ensure that action taken will lead to significant reductions. From a systems
perspective, hundreds of minor actions will not yield anywhere near as much as one change in the major
energy consuming sub-sectors. Aviation is thus, as outlined earlier, a key sector to focus on, followed by - in
smaller to medium-sized islands - hotels, as these are comparably energy-intense, while car-travel is not as
relevant. Cruise ships will be the third (in the case of TCI even the most energy intense) energy sub-sector.
This is dependent on whether fuels are bunkered in the respective island or not. Even where this is not the
case, however, it deserves to be noted that the tourism systems of islands receiving cruise tourists are
depending on oil bunkered elsewhere.
Tourism management is primarily concerned with revenue management, as the ultimate goal of any
economic sector is to generate profits and jobs. A general critique of tourism management in this regard
must be that it is too occupied with revenue, rather than profits as well as multiplier effects in the
economy. This is an important distinction because profits have been declining in many tourism sub-sectors,
such as aviation, where revenues have been increasing through continuously growing tourist volumes,
while profits have stagnated. This is equally relevant for average length of stay, which is falling worldwide:
to maintain bed-night numbers, destinations have consequently had to permanently increase tourist
numbers. However, in the case of Turks and Caicos, average length of stay has actually increased from 6.46
nights in 2002 to 7 nights in 2006, a positive trend that tourism actors should seek to maintain.
In an attempt to look at both profits and emissions of greenhouse gases, a number of concepts have been
developed. One of the most important overall objectives can be defined as ‘reduce the average energy
use/emissions per tourist’. Table 5.2.1 also illustrates the situation for a number of other islands in terms of
weighted average emissions per tourist (air travel only), as well as emissions per tourist for the main
market. The table can serve as a benchmark for inter-island comparison.
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