We analyse some key problems facing a small country for whom specialisation in nature-based tourism is an available option, and who aims at maximising non-resident tourists’ total expenditure. We discuss and develop some of the main results of the thin economic literature on the topic. As for growth prospects associated with specialisation in tourism, we find that few plausible changes in assumptions generate more favourable results than those previously known in the literature. Then we turn to the impact of tourism development on the quality of the resource. We show that, since in the tourism case the exhaustible components of the latter are characterised by a quality-quantity trade-off, a specific economic incentive exists such that the optimal rate of exploitation is more conservative than in the case of traditional natural resources. Finally, we briefly discuss problems of sustainability as well as some specific market failures in the presence of non homotheticity and of strong exogenous seasonality in demand patterns. We conclude that even though potentially the economic consequences of specialisation in tourism are promising ones, market solutions implying unsustainable economic exploitation of the natural resource are likely.