Impact of smoke-free environments on tourism in selected Caribbean countries

In this paper, we analyze the effect of comprehensive smoke-free legislation in four CARICOM countries -Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago- over the tourism industry. Tourism is the dominant industry in several Caribbean countries and therefore it is important to measure the potential impact of public policies addressing banning of smoking in public places to reassure that hospitality and tourism businesses will not be affected. Using a synthetic control methodology we measure the impact of implementing smoke-free environments (SFE) over the evolution of three tourism variables -inbound tourism arrivals, tourism expenditures and average length of stay. The main findings suggest that implementing SFE did not deter the arrival of tourists, nor affected tourism expenditures or the average length of stay in each of the individual case studies: Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. The evidence provided also suggests that there were no effects on the four countries that implemented SFE measured as a group. These results are robust to different specifications of the donor pool of countries used to construct the counterfactual scenario in each case study.