When they began to play an active role in the economic development of their economies shortly after World War II, CARICOM governments assigned export tourism a lower priority than industrialization in their development programs. This might have been due to the belief among economists that industrial development was the quickest way a nation could lift its citizens out of poverty and perhaps to the work of the Caribbean Commission that devoted more research effort to industrial development in the British Caribbean than it did to export tourism. Nevertheless, after the closure of the Cuban tourist plant in the early 1960s, which resulted in a rapid surge in CARICOM export tourism to more developed nations, analysts began to assess the net benefits of export tourism to regional economies.

Opinion was divided on the benefits of export tourism to CARICOM economies, with most West Indian economists viewing export tourism negatively. Demas said that

A serious disadvantage of export tourism, some other economists argued, was that its growth might worsen economic dualism in Caribbean economies, raise the reservation wage of labor and thus encourage some individuals to remain unemployed rather than work for lower wages in some other sector, especially agriculture (DeCastro and Jefferson 1968, 186).

The West India Royal Commission, and some governments, however, emphasized the potential employment and foreign exchange benefits, interindustry linkages, and economic diversification from the growth of export tourism. For example, it argued that the growth of export tourism would provide an increasing number of employment opportunities outside agriculture (West India Royal Commission Report 1945, 256), a number which Sir Arthur Lewis (1950, 10) estimated would be approximately 10,000–40,000 in the entire Caribbean by 1960.