Restriction on private autonomy
Phase models
signed into law on 19 November 2001, just 10 weeks after the attacks. This showed the vulnerability and failing of the actual system. The ATSA established among other things a new Transportation Security Administration (TSA) within the Department of Transportation. The main objective of the Act was to enhance the national airport security services, which are now under federal management and control. In particular, the TSA and companies under contract with it now operate the screening of individuals and property. The new law requires additionally the qualification, training and testing of all employees as much as the presence of uniformed Federal law enforcement officers at all commercial airports. The Federal Government is now particularly in charge of the following:
• Supervision of the passenger and baggage security at 420 commercial passenger airports within the USA
• Performance of intensive background checks, training and testing of screeners and security personnel
• Purchasing and maintaining all screening equipment
• Oversee patrolling of secure areas and monitoring of the quality of the airport’s access control
• Cooperating with other law enforcement authorities at the federal, state and local levels as well as being a key facilitator of coordination regarding homeland security.
In the phase of policy formulation, the concrete and already prioritized problems are combined with programmes and aims. Because it has already been indicated that experts and laymen scarcely agree on the ways and forms of assessing risks, it is significant which way risk assessment decision makers should follow. In this phase, an important role falls on the lobbies and pressure groups who are heard as experts and affected people and who, through self-obligation, can influence further legislative activities.
In the phase of policy implementation, programmes, respectively, laws, are issued, monitored and, if necessary, sanctioned as offences. It is only with this implementation that the actual effect of a political decision can be judged.
State regulations should not only, however, be viewed as cost-effective but also as a measure to ensure a sustainable tourism development. For environmental problems that are not necessarily caused by tourism, state intervention is sometimes the only opportunity to prevent negative events. The careless contact and misuse of resources in the form of water contamination or air pollution frequently appears as a causal area of tourism crises.
Example 18: Erika and Prestige
The legally complicated issue of international cargo transported by seaways illustrates that only the state or, like in the following cases, the international community is able to prevent effectively negative events of enormous consequences for both nature and tourism.
On Wednesday, 13 November 2002, in stormy weather conditions, a serious accident occurred with the oil tanker ‘PRESTIGE’, which was sailing off the West Coast of Galicia (Spain). It was reported that the ship, with 77 000 tonnes of heavy fuel on board, was in danger of sinking because of a large crack in the starboard side of the hull. Upon request of the owner and his
Sustainable tourism development
insurer, the Dutch salvage company ‘SMIT’
took control of the vessel. The ship was towed to sea, and while the discussions were ongoing on where it could find a safe haven to transfer its cargo to another ship, the situation deteriorated on board.
On Tuesday morning, 19 November, the ship structure collapsed and the tanker broke in two some 100 miles off the Spanish and Portuguese coast. The dangerous cargo was spilled into the sea and caused enormous pollution off the Galicia coast, a very important fishing and tourism area.
A similar accident took place less than 3 years ago, when the oil tanker ‘ERIKA’, which carried 35 000 tonnes of this persistent and difficult to clean oil, polluted the coast of France. In both cases, the oil tankers were old single-hull tankers that offered little safety in the event of an accident.
As measures by single countries are of no major impact when it concerns maritime safety, the European Union took the initiative and adopted a set of measures that will effectively ban these substandard ships from European waters in the future. These initiatives, which have no doubt financial implications for the companies affected, will benefit not only the environment but also the tourism sector, both of which were strongly affected by both events.
It is important to remember the other side of the welfare state that helps businesses affected by negative events. This side appears if the state compensates damages or losses caused by the incident in order to ensure, for example, the further existence of a company or the whole branch.
However, the state as a sphere of activity reacts more slowly than the other spheres. Whilst the latter forget negative events over the course of time and, therefore, do not have any effect, political decisions that lead to laws or other political norms have from
then on a quasi-everlasting effect. This is cost-effective both for the organization directly affected and the rivals included in the legal decisions. Practice shows, however, that in every case it is possible to influence the reaction of the state and, therefore, the consequences through exemplary behaviour. This option is recommended not only for the case where the organization has a legal responsibility but also for the case where the organization is just attributed this responsibility.
One of the many typical examples is the compensation of the Spanish government after the attacks on commuter trains in Madrid on 11 March 2004. The government paid those affected some 25 million Euros for ‘missed profits’.
Compensates damages or losses caused
Political norms Quasi-everlast- ing effect
Picture: Taken on 17 November 2002 with a radar satellite of ESA’s Earth Watching Project. The picture shows the spilling oil of the Prestige spread across an area of 100 km.
Trails of the Prestige
3.4.2 The outer view
International tourism is part of the foreign trade of a state. If, for example, an American citizen travels outside of the U.S., from the point of view of the U.S. economy, an import of tourism services takes place. At the same time, an export of services takes place if it is looked at from the point of view of the receiving country.
While considering this for the aspects of crisis management, it has to be taken into account that foreign trade and especially the import of services and goods from other countries have always been the object of limitations and regulations. This happened in forms of tariffs i.e. customs, or non-tariff barriers i.e.
all other remaining forms. The advice or the warning not to travel to a specific country is from this perspective a non-tariff barrier as it increases the barriers of importation of tourism services.
The travel advice is normally prepared and issued by the ministries of foreign affairs. They exist in the first place for the protection of their own citizens. Safety and security were two of the major reasons for which previously nomadic and individual human beings started to live together in cities and other settlements and later formed states. The modern state continues to provide this protection and main- tains a great number of systems which, whenever necessary indicate potential risks and threats to all its citizens. This includes that in more and more states the services are established for the first time or exi- sting procedures are improved which aim at those citizens travelling or living outside of their home country. Diplomatic and consular services, military forces but also evacuation and rescue services have been used in the recent past more and more often for citizens, who while being abroad found them- selves in extreme and difficult situations. As evacuation and rescue services are limited, very costly and are to be used only in the extreme situations, travel advice has also from this point of view, an organi- zational and economic dimension for the issuing state. With its travel advice, the issuing foreign office aims at regularly informing its citizens on threats to their personal safety arising from political unrest, lawlessness, violence, natural disasters, epidemics etc. so that they can, in good time, take the necessa- ry steps to leave the troubled area by their own means. The practical interference of the state, especial- ly in forms of evacuation and rescue services needs to be limited to emergency situations.
Example 19: MedEvac, the Flying Hospital
Since the year 2000, a completely equipped airbus of the German Air Force is operational for the transportation of the wounded and ill in case of emergency. A second aircraft can be made avai- lable within three days. Each of these flying hospitals has six modern highly equipped intensive- care beds as well as thirty-six transportation facilities for recumbent patients. Each aircraft has a crew of thirty medical doctors and assistants. Besides the military use of this aircraft, the MedE- vac has already been used several times to transport tourists from abroad back to Germany.
On its first mission in the year 2000, the MedEvac brought fifty Palestinian children for medical treatment to Germany. In April 2002, twelve heavily burned German tourists, victims of the attacks in Djerba (Tunisia), were repatriated. In May of the same year, French citizens who were seriously wounded during the attacks in Karachi (Pakistan) were flown back to France.
At the request of a German travel insurance company in March 2004, the MedEvac transported thirty-three seriously wounded tourists of a bus accident from Mexico back to Germany. This mission became its first commercial flight as the costs were fully covered by the insurance
company. At the turn of the year 2004, in a total of three rescue flights, a hundred and thirty severely injured German and other European tourists, victims of the Tsunami in Asia, were carried back from Phuket and Bangkok (Thailand) to Germany.
Prior to these flights there had been other rescue operations carried out by the German Air Force. A well-known mission took place in 1978 when two airplanes brought back to Germany tourists who had been severely injured in the gas explosion on the camping ground of ‘Los Alfaques’ (Spain). At that
time, the flights were still limited to the transportation of the victims. Only nowadays it is possible through the MedEvac to also provide medical treatment to severely wounded patients.
Travel advisories, which nowadays are issued within a few hours after a negative event has taken place, also have political and economic implications for the country concerned. Although travel advisories have in this sense always been subject to foreign political controversies (see Example 31), the intensity and quality of those disputes increased undoubtedly after the attacks of 11 September 2001 in the United States. While in the past those controversies were in most cases limited to the simple exchange of positions, the current strategies and techniques become clearly more sophisticated and professional.
They increase on the one hand the escalation of the political controversy but contribute on the other hand to an improved opinion forming since the mechanism, schemes and details are discussed. (For a detailed discussion on travel advisories see also Section 4.2.1.3.4)
While travel advisories are fundamentally aimed at citizens travelling abroad, other measures can also be taken towards another direction and be aimed at inbound tourism. This happens often to improve the security in a country. In this case, the economic consequences are mainly limited to the issuing country and especially to its tourism industry. The political consequences, however, still exist as the following example illustrates.
Example 20: Tit for Tat
The attacks of 11 September 2001 on the United States changed the security environment dramatically. The government of the U.S. introduced measures so far unknown, both in quality and quantity. Among these was the introduction of new visa policies and new passports including biometrical data. Some countries were required to undergo more rigorous security controls than others. This differentiated treatment created problems.
As from 5 January 2004, Brazilians entering the U.S. were required to provide fingerprints and photos and had to accept a more thorough security check than the other travelers. This not only led to queuing and longer delays. Brazilians also saw how citizens from other countries were passing through the immigration lines without undergoing the same procedures. The political reaction did not take long.
Picture: German Airforce. Inside of the MedEvac.
In a tit-for-tat move Brazil decided, on account of human dignity and the right to reciprocity, to implement the same controls on U.S. visitors to Brazil: digital track check, photo, fingerprints, even the payment of a visa of US$100 (the same amount as the U.S. was charging Brazilians).
At the same time, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry officially addressed the U.S. government and requested that Brazil should be taken off the list of countries subject to the additional security measures.
This official incident was widely reported and made it a case of international interest. However, this retaliatory response was not unanimously shared in Brazil. In view of the negative impact of this new policy on tourism, the local authorities of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s number one destination, together with its private sector, requested that these new measures be stopped. To lower the immediate impact, the city of Rio de Janeiro welcomed American tourists at the airport with flowers, a charm bracelet and a T-shirt saying ‘Rio Loves You’.
Following talks, the situation normalized. However, the case of Brazil illustrates well how tourism, one of the world’s biggest economic activities, is increasingly becoming a tool of foreign policy.