Research note · Caribbean tourism value chains
The All-Inclusive Question
Development model or high-leakage operating model?
This Caribbean-wide report treats all-inclusive resorts as governed value chains. The test is whether the visitor dollar produces local income, public revenue, resilient suppliers, better jobs, and destination-wide value after the package price is unbundled.
Abstract
Visitor-dollar retention in all-inclusive tourism is a governance question.
Evaluate when all-inclusive resorts create local public value and when the model shifts visitor spending into external capture, weak supplier spillovers, or unpriced public costs.
The report treats the all-inclusive resort as a governed value chain: ownership, booking channels, procurement, labor outcomes, fiscal concessions, and environmental burdens are analyzed as routing systems.
The decisive variable is not the meal plan. Local value depends on ownership transparency, local supplier capacity, worker income and advancement, public-revenue capture, and whether concessions are tied to measurable performance.
Comparable Caribbean data on ownership, procurement, wage bands, tax expenditures, and environmental costs remain incomplete, so the report separates measured evidence from modeled and directional claims.
- All-inclusive resorts are not automatically high-leakage operating models; their development value depends on ownership, suppliers, worker pay, public concessions, and environmental management.
- Leakage risk rises when foreign ownership, offshore booking, imported inputs, debt service, management fees, and profit repatriation stack on top of each other.
- Local linkages improve when procurement targets are paired with reliable suppliers, food safety, logistics, finance, transparent purchasing, and predictable payment terms.
- Worker income can be meaningful, but the gain weakens where wages are low, service charges are opaque, hours are unstable, and career ladders are thin.
- Tax holidays, duty concessions, land terms, and infrastructure support are justified only when the public gain can be measured and enforced.
- The best question is not whether a resort is all-inclusive. It is how much local value is created per scarce acre, worker hour, public concession, imported dollar, and ecological cost.
Evidence framework
Measured, modeled, and directional claims are kept separate.
The report marks the difference between directly observed public records, modeled retention estimates, directional country readings, and disclosure gaps that should be closed before incentives are renewed.
Visitor receipts, arrivals, taxes, employment, or published procurement where official records exist.
Retention and leakage channels estimated from tourism value-added logic where direct disclosure is incomplete.
Country or resort-system readings where the development mechanism is clear but comparable public data are thin.
Ownership, management fees, wage bands, tax expenditures, and environmental costs that should be published.
Methods, data, and limitations
The report separates money volume from local claim.
The method starts from tourism satellite-account logic: gross visitor expenditure is not the same as domestic value added, retained resident income, tax capture, or public value. The report keeps direct effects, indirect supplier effects, induced household effects, and leakage channels conceptually separate.
Package prices can be captured by airlines, tour operators, platforms, management fees, debt service, imports, and external owners before domestic income appears.
Few destinations publish harmonized all-inclusive room counts, ownership, procurement shares, tax expenditures, wage bands, and environmental metrics.
A multiplier is not free extra money. It depends on local supply capacity, household spending, import intensity, tax capture, and leakages in later rounds.
Some cases have official or World Bank evidence; others are directional because public data on ownership and procurement are thin.
Conceptual model
Package-price allocation determines retention and leakage.
This diagram is schematic. It shows the recurring channels that determine whether a prepaid visitor dollar becomes resident income, public revenue, supplier demand, or external capture.
Results summary
Retention rises when procurement, ownership, labor, and public-value rules are enforceable.
The values below are a comparative index for the report's four model types. They expose why the same all-inclusive label can imply very different development outcomes.
Scenario scores are comparative indexes, not audited percentages. They summarize relative pressure across leakage, supplier readiness, worker depth, and public-value tests.
Formal jobs exist, but external ownership, import dependence, and fee channels dominate.
Local value improves when contracts, payment terms, and performance reporting are real.
Ownership can retain more surplus, but imports and capacity constraints still matter.
Value spreads through restaurants, taxis, guides, rentals, culture, and local firms.
Workers, local suppliers, tours, culture, and resident-owned firms keep more of the visitor dollar in circulation.
Taxes, levies, infrastructure funds, and environmental mitigation convert private resort activity into public value.
Imports, external booking, management fees, debt service, and repatriated profit move value away from the island.
Figure note: conceptual package-price allocation model. Color separates retained local value, public capture, and leakage channels; path width and placement are schematic and should not be read as measured shares.
Member report
The full all-inclusive report is member access.
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