CHAPTER 2: Conceptualizing Tourism Disasters, Crises and Risks
2.1.2 Terrorism, war and political unrest 41
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The tourism industry as a whole is vulnerable to a wide range of disasters, crises and risks.
Some are of short duration, while others last an extended period of time. They affect the industry in the destination itself, in origin markets or competing destinations.
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The dynamics of terrorism, war and political instability as some of the disasters, crises and risks that affect the tourism sector and tourists, are gleaned from the scholarly work of Dolnicar (2007), Sӧnmez et al. (1999), Lerbinger (2012), Maditinos-Vassiliadis et al. (2008), Pforr (2006), Blake et al. (2003), Scott et al. (2010), Laws et al. (2007), Baker (2014), Sӧnmez (1998) and Araña et al. (2007), and they are, though not exhaustively, as follows:
Terrorism, wars and political instability have been escalating since the 1970s (Sӧnmez et al, 1999) and reaching their peak in the mid-1980s (Sӧnmez, 1998). These disasters increase tourists’ perceptions of travel risk and subsequently influence their travel decisions. Perception of travel risk is complex (Sӧnmez et al., 1999) and tends to depend on a range of factors such as: type of risk, media coverage, previous tourist experience, and demographic characteristics of tourists. For example, Mansfeld et al. (2011) suggest that tourists’ nationality and level of experience influences their reactions to terrorism. Many scholars unanimously agree that being safe on a vacation (Baker, 2014; Blake et al., 2003 and Scott et al., 2010) is an expected requirement for any visitor in any given destination. Thus, tourists tend to substitute unsafe destinations with safer ones (Baker, 2014; Dolnicar, 2007; Laws et al., 2007; Sӧnmez et al., 1999; Pforr, 2006; and Araña et al., 2007). Acts of terrorism, war and political instability damage the image of the destination (Maditinos-Vassiliadis et al., 2008, Sӧnmez et al., 1999 and Sӧnmez, 1998) and scare off potential visitation.
According to Mansfeld et al. (2011), terrorism can manifests itself in three forms: domestic, international, and cross-border terrorism. There is a relationship between tourism and terrorism and is manifested in the following scenarios: terrorism is aimed at civil targets, but affects tourists as well; terrorism that is geared towards economic targets that are functional and, lastly, terrorism that targets tourism and or tourists, since both are regarded as “soft targets”, which
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enjoy a lot of media coverage. The main reason why tourists are turned into soft targets by terrorists [and by extension criminals] are advanced by Mansfeld et al. (2011) as follows:
firstly, they tend to carry much portable wealth; secondly, they ignore normal precautions;
thirdly, they are not familiar with their novel sorroundings; fourth, they are less inclined to report crimes; fifth, they may not identify their assailants correctly; and lastly, they do not return to foreign destinations as witnesses at trials even if they are requested by the criminal justice systems. Disasters, crises, and risks such as wars have a major impact on tourism demand (Sӧnmez, 1998; Maditinos-Vassiliadis et al., 2008 and Mansfeld et al., 2011). Wars are historically synthesised into the following typologies: Cross-border wars; trans-border wars; wars of attrition, and civil wars (Mansfeld et al., 2011). Civil or political unrest take the form of coup d’état; violent demonstrations; uprisings, and riots (Mansfeld et al., 2011).
Political instability is caused by – amongst other factors – terrorist attacks, and this subsequently leads to a decline in tourist arrivals (Seddighi et al., 2001 and Stafford et al., 2002). This was the case with September 11, 2001 attacks on Washington DC (Baker, 2014;
Blunk et al., 2006 and Bonham et al., 2006). This caused a shift in the preferences of travellers for particular destinations (Baker, 2014 and Laws et al., 2007). Other examples of terrorist attacks that have affected tourism negatively are: the 1984 and 1987 terrorist incident in Spain, which led to a reduction of 140 000 tourists (Baker, 2014), the 1991 Persian Gulf War (Sӧnmez, 1998 and Sӧnmez et al., 1999); the 1989 conflict in Tiananmen Square in China led to thousands of tourists (11 500) cancelling visits to Beijing; lower numbers of British and German tourists arrivals in Greece due to political instability and terrorism in the years 1964, 1988 and 1991 (Maditinos-Vassiliadis et al., 2008); the frequent suicide bombing of local buses in Tel Aviv (Mansfeld et al., 2011); and, Operation Desert Storm, which led to a reduced number of inbound and outbound travelers in North America, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Turkey,
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and the United Arab Emirates (Sӧnmez et al., 1999). Other notable cases of political conflict include the disintegration of Yugoslavia, conflicts in Palestinian and Israeli in the Middle East, and conflict between India and Pakistan, while tourism was adversely affected during Zimbabwe’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) in 1965, which was followed by a 15-year liberation war, which lasted until 1990. Due to 1967-1969 war Zambia had low tourist arrivals (Sӧnmez et al., 1999). Mansfeld et al. (2011) lend credence to this scenario by stating that security-related incidents alter tourists’ perceptions of risk, and thus are always translated into travel decisions. These can manifest themselves in the form of: cancellations of booked trips, avoiding travelling to affected destinations, moving to a safer place, evacuating the affected destination or returning home.
Santana-Gallego et al. (2016) have also analysed the impact of terrorism, crime and corruption on tourism with respect to the attractiveness of the country, and subsequently divided 170 countries into two categories, namely, ‘countries-attractive to tourists’ (those with more than two World Heritage sites) and ‘countries unattractive to tourists’ (those with 0,1 or 2 World Heritage sites). Their findings reveal that the effect on terrorism on leisure tourism in both categories do not differ. The difference lies with business tourism. Terrorism has no effect on business tourism in countries attractive to tourists. The opposite holds true for countries unattractive to tourists, where terrorism affects business tourism negatively. Their findings were corroborated by Altindag (2014), who argue that if tourists are attracted by a rich basket of a country’s tourism offerings, they may not necessarily be discouraged by the crime rate.
Simply put, it could be argued that a country’s attractiveness partly overshadows the risk of becoming a victim in a given destination. Perceived level of corruption has a discernable impact on businesss tourism in countries that lure many tourists. This implies that the country’s attractiveness ameliorates the effect of instability on inbound tourism. Terrorism, crime and
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corruption has less of an effect in countries endowed with a vast array of heritage sites that attract tourists. This explains in part why it is not easy to visit substitutes for such destinations (Santana-Gallego et al., 2016).
Furthermore, Santana-Gallego et al. (2016) shed more light on the interconnection between instability and tourist arrivals in developing and developed countries. They contend that terrorism has a large impact on visitation to developing than developed countries. This is attributable to violence in the former. Paradoxically, crime has a more noticeable impact on total and leisure tourism in developed countries than developing ones, possibly because tourists expect high levels of crime to exist in the latter and they become resilient to it. The above scholars argue that corruption adversely affects business tourist arrivals in developing countries, but amazingly, increases tourist arrivals in less developed destinations or countries.
Their analysis reveal that political and institutional instability, expressed in terms of terrorism, crime and corruption, negatively affect international tourist arrivals. Saha et al. (2015) argue that countries with lower levels of corruption attract more international tourists. They further stress that the effects of political instability on tourism can lasts at least one year, and fade away a year later. Some destinations are more resilient to terrorism, crime and corruption, as they recover more quickly than others facing similar challenges (Saha et al., 2015).
According to Santana-Gallego et al. (2015), on the 26 June 2015, 38 British people were killed by terrorists at a tourists resort in Port EL Kantaoui, in Tunisia. This was perceived as an enormous human tragedy. Tunisia gets almost 15% of its GDP from tourism, and the economic consequences were dire, as many tour operators and air companies were obliged to do adjustments, or cancel tourist bookings. Many potential tourists shifted their travel trips to safer destinations, such as Spain or Italy. These scholars reveal that the attack was not an isolated
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incident, as there were others elsewhere. Mention could be made of France (1 death), Kuwait (27 deaths), Syria (20 deaths), and Somalia (reported 70 deaths). The authors add that terrorism is, however, not only the risk factor affecting tourism destination choices. They argue that other factors, such as crime and corruption, also destabilise the tourism industry greatly. The countries experiencing terrorism, crime, and corruption are not able to develop their tourist sector, despite its massive potential cultural and environmental attractiveness. They argue that terrorism and crime have a direct cost (value of damaged structures, lives lost or damaged, injuries sustained and cleanup) and an indirect cost (high insurance premiums, higher security coast and lost commerce). Santana-Gallego et al. (2015) argue that terrorism, crime and corruption jointly act as deterrents to travellers, because tourists want to go to safe places. If tourists perceive a risk of injury, death, or a highly stressful situation, they will naturally avoid such a destination. In certain cases, tourists are used by terrorists as political targets, to gain more media coverage. Violence, as well as crime- and corruption-infested destinations are at a disadvantage, because governments in tourists’ origin countries will advise against travelling to them. Consequently, travel agencies would cancel tours due to inadequate bookings or a fear of liability suits. Finally they would then promote other destinations perceived to be much safer. Terrorist attacks and political riots can damage infrastructure that supports the tourism sector (Santana-Gallego et al., 2015).
Other major negative impacts of these incidents (Mansfeld et al., 2011 and Sӧnmez et al., 1999) are as follows: peace, safety and security in the host nation are affected, and this in turn affects the primary conditions required for successful tourism development, where tour operators are negatively affected, and their business performs weakly; the affected tourists generating markets are excluded by government-regulated tour operators; they stop operations in affected markets, and have to temporarily relocate their travelling clients; the quality of security
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infrastructure [alarms, metal detectors] become degraded, attributable to the fact that many employees become redundant; there is shortage of capital for regular upgrades; and a great deal of resources must be channeled towards rehabilitation of the affected infrastructure once the threats are over; the marketing campaigns of many transnational hotel and restaurants chains are removed from their global distribution networks and they cease to operate in affected destinations; many companies are forced to restructure their human resources. Consequently, employees become redundant as they are left with little capital to operate, and this ultimately impact adversely on the quality of their services, products and customer satisfaction. Finally, there is a sharp increase in insurance premiums and the demand for airline and cruise lines is reduced and this causes profit and general economic losses.
The impacts of terrorism in particular can thus be synthesised into six main typologies using multidisciplinary approach (Laws et al., 2007). They are captured by the following figure:
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Terrorism is highly disruptive to the tourism sector and the economies of destinations, and as such, needs to be dealt with rigorously. Lerbinger (2012:200-206) advances the following measures to deal with terrorism. A synopsis is as follows: reduce vulnerability to threats, becoming aware of an organisations’ vulnerabilities and seeking ways of reducing them;
installing security measures, and reducing the frustrations that lead to aggression; strengthening security measures: beefing up security offices and assigning intelligence function to them;
employing chief risk security officers to take charge of duties related to cybersecurity like e- discovery, records retention, disaster recovery; defusing frustrations (removing conditions that trigger frustration amongst people); engaging in intelligence activities (create “space” for intelligence personnel to infiltrate terrorists with a view to alert a target person or organization of an imminent action); improve preparedness (put in place employee awareness and education programs to make “counter-epsionage mindset” part of the corporate culture, and improve alert systems); exercise security measures and enforce laws to deter illegal actions; arrest and imprison the perpetrators of aggressive acts; take defensive action and institute product recalls.
Terrorism, war and political instability cannot be easily avoided by governments and economic sectors including tourism. To this end, Lerbinger (2012:186) cautions that all organisations must be prepared for terrorist acts which might take the following forms: “kidnapping of executives, workplace violence, mailing of bomb or anthrax-laden letters, extortion attempts, corporate espionage, cybercrime, placement of malicious rumours and defamation by the Internet.”