Tomaz Ponce Dentinho

Islands are one of the most important destinations for tourism and leisure. However, islands exhibit different levels of attractiveness in the course of time and comparing with other islands. The objective of this paper is to analyze this subject for the Archipelago of the Azores, using gravity models. The study aims to understand different performances along time and between islands caused by changes in the travel costs and in the supply side (e.g. number of hotel beds, island of destination, etc.). The study concludes that the main factors of the tourism of the Azores are the distance to the source countries, the economic product of those countries, the number of beds of each island, the particular characteristics of each island and the competition with other tourist destinations. 1 1