Reframing destination stability: how scale reshapes tourism volatility in the Balearic Islands

Tourism destinations are often described as spatially differentiated systems, with coastal areas portrayed as more stable and inland areas as more volatile. Yet, it remains unclear whether these differences arise from location per se or from underlying structural properties of destinations. This paper develops a structural perspective on destination stability by examining the association between tourism-system scale and supply-side accommodation-capacity volatility at the municipal level in the Balearic Islands. Using annual data on regulated accommodation capacity for 62 municipalities over 2004–2024, supply-side accommodation-capacity volatility is measured as the standard deviation of growth rates in accommodation places and proxy system scale by average capacity. A log–log model, estimated with robust and bootstrap procedures and complemented by spatial diagnostics, reveals a strong negative elasticity between scale and volatility: larger destinations exhibit systematically lower fluctuations, while smaller systems are more unstable. Once scale is controlled for, the widely assumed coastal-inland divide in volatility largely disappears, and the independent contribution of spatial location becomes negligible. These findings indicate that structural stability in regulated accommodation capacity is strongly associated with tourism-system scale rather than being solely attributable to geographical location. The paper contributes to destination marketing and management by: (i) using supply-side accommodation-capacity volatility as an indicator of structural destination stability, (ii) providing evidence of a negative association between municipal tourism-system size and supply-side accommodation-capacity volatility, and (iii) qualifying spatially grounded interpretations of coastal stability. Policy implications are discussed for the design of capacity, diversification and redistribution strategies in mature sun-and-sand destinations.