Hub dependency: airport polarisation and the illusion of territorial diversification in Malagasy tourism

Abstract

Official communication in Madagascar presented autumn 2025 as evidence of « growing territorial diversification », regional airports having overtaken Ivato-Antananarivo in arrivals for the first time, and the first half of 2026 as a « consolidation of the recovery », with 0.5 % growth. This article tests both claims against monthly ministerial data, central-bank half-year statistics and sectoral indicators on investment and capacity, within a framework combining tourism geography (discontinuity, transferred centrality, typologies of tourist places) and transport economics (nodality, hub-and-spoke structures, node vulnerability). Three results emerge. First, the Malagasy tourism system is monocentric: Ivato concentrates 51.9 % of all entries and 59.1 % of air entries, and regional airports do not substitute for the hub but co-vary with it (r = +0.81 across 2025, excluding October). Second, the October 2025 suspension of long-haul services operates as a quasi-experiment: Ivato traffic falls by 36.8 %, regional entries exceed by 6,002 the level predicted by their relationship with the hub (standardised residual +2.58), and the hierarchy is restored the following month. The observed « diversification » is an artefact of node failure, not a shift in demand. Third, the near-stagnation of the first half of 2026 conceals a recomposition between subsystems of highly unequal unit value: air arrivals rise 15.6 % while cruise arrivals fall 53.8 %, with an estimated net effect on receipts of about +15 %. The binding constraint is nodal rather than capacity-related, since implied hotel occupancy lies between 21 % and 40 %, and gateway diversification is better understood as territorial insurance than as spatial planning.