The central theme of the conference is ‘Archipelago Tourism’ which would also be the tag line for the conference series. The specific theme for 2016 INTACT is ‘Marine Tourism’. This conference is aimed to discuss issues, paradigms, theories, concepts, polices and practical experiences on Marine Tourism in Archipelagic hemisphere.
In archipelago tourism, problem and difficulties may occur in social or natural issues, in developing destinations, managing destinations, or may be remote from either. The consequences may be either mild or relatively short term or have long term impacts on existing or future tourism industry systems. These would be seriously challenged to secure and maintain tourism development properly and it clearly does matter in terms of island visitation and awareness levels of archipelago areas. Thus it raises important issues to study. The data and empirical analyses about archipelago tourism remain limited; it needs to be empirically understood. It is, therefore, one need to have a forum to share the knowledge and expertise to welcome the new discussion. The forum that is proposed to deal with the issues is International Academic Conference on Tourism (INTACT 2016). This conference may trigger the tourism academicians and practitioners to become active in researching and publishing in the area of archipelago tourism.