Ayşegül Acar, research assist­ant at Kar­abük Uni­ver­sity, Tur­key, and doc­tor­al stu­dent at Istan­bul Uni­ver­sity, explores the dis­com­fit­ing rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ism and tour­ism in this “GT” Insight.

Bombs explod­ing one after anoth­er, vehicles plough­ing through masses of people, media cov­er­age, and the responses of those in power; they all cre­ate ten­sion, inter­na­tion­al con­flict, dis­order, and polit­ic­al instabil­ity.

For tour­ism, an industry of peace, ter­ror­ism undoubtedly does great harm. As a mat­ter of fact, the tour­ism indus­tries of coun­tries most greatly affected by ter­ror­ism often fall flat in the after­math of each attack; a tech­nic­al knock out in box­ing terms.

Today ter­ror­ism often tar­gets tour­ist des­tin­a­tions and events. Apart from provid­ing easy or “soft” tar­gets, why is tour­ism such an attract­ive tar­get for ter­ror­ists?

The media’s relationship with terrorism

The oft-cited belief that “one person’s ter­ror­ist is anoth­er per­son’s free­dom fight­er” blurs our under­stand­ing of ter­ror­ism. Even if the object­ives of ter­ror­ists them­selves dif­fer from one to anoth­er, ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies in gen­er­al can be gathered with­in three basic tac­tic­al object­ives:

Pub­li­city (to pub­li­cise a mes­sage, a voice); Polit­ic­al instabil­ity (to hurt the legit­im­acy of the cur­rent regime in a coun­try); and Eco­nom­ic harm (to inflict mater­i­al pres­sure on the pub­lic and their lead­ers).

While eco­nom­ic harm is of greatest con­cern to the tour­ism industry, it may be pos­sible to explain mod­ern ter­ror­ism by invest­ig­at­ing the role of the mass media. It can be argued that the media has served to escal­ate the num­ber of viol­ent ter­ror­ist acts since the early 1970s.

Firstly, let us eval­u­ate the four basic ele­ments of the com­mu­nic­a­tion pro­cess in the con­text of ter­ror­ism. That is, the mes­sen­ger (the ter­ror­ist), the recip­i­ent (the polit­ic­al tar­get of the ter­ror­ist act), the mes­sage (the ter­ror­ist act itself involving indi­vidu­al or insti­tu­tion­al vic­tims), and the feed­back (the response of the recip­i­ent).

Let us illus­trate this in a scen­ario that we all are famil­i­ar with in the con­text of travel & tour­ism. Let’s sup­pose that ter­ror­ists hijack an air­liner. In this case the ter­ror­ists would ini­ti­ate the com­mu­nic­a­tion. The tar­get of these ter­ror­ists’ mes­sage is most prob­ably a gov­ern­ment. The pas­sen­gers in the air­liner and the hijack­ing itself will serve as the mes­sage which is likely to con­tain cer­tain requests. Should the tar­geted gov­ern­ment act in accord­ance with the ter­ror­ists’ requests, we would expect the ter­ror­ists to con­sider their com­mu­nic­a­tion suc­cess­ful.

Through it all the mass media acts as an amp­li­fi­er; turn­ing up the volume on the com­mu­nic­a­tion; allow­ing many more people to hear the mes­sage than would oth­er­wise be pos­sible. Thus by amp­li­fy­ing and accel­er­at­ing the spread of news, the mass media has turned ter­ror­ism into a cost-effect­ive means of com­mu­nic­a­tion by those determ­ined to con­vey their mes­sage by any means neces­sary.

This played out dur­ing the Palestini­an attack on the 1972 Munich Olympic Games, which caused the death of 11 Israeli sol­diers. The Olympics is a high-pro­file event involving the par­ti­cip­a­tion of not only ath­letes, but also polit­ic­al and media rep­res­ent­at­ives from most of the world’s nations. The events in Munich were wit­nessed by nearly 800 mil­lion tele­vi­sion view­ers around the world and con­veyed a mes­sage about Israel’s occu­pa­tion of Palestine.

Thus, through the par­ti­cip­a­tion of mass media, a rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ism and travel & tour­ism was born. Since then the media has made ter­ror acts become almost famil­i­ar or “com­mon” incid­ents that can be encountered any­time and any­where. The fact that ter­ror­ism is “nor­mal” nowadays has made extraordin­ary secur­ity meas­ures, par­tic­u­larly at air­ports, a per­man­ent and accept­able part of life.

Turk­ish police secure the area after an explo­sion in the cent­ral Istan­bul Sul­ta­nah­met dis­trict on Janu­ary 12, 2016 in Istan­bul, Tur­key. (Photo by Can Erok/Getty Images)

How can terrorism and tourism be related to each other?

How can there be a close rela­tion­ship, a com­mon point, between these two very dif­fer­ent con­cepts; one con­struct­ive and one destruct­ive? Explor­ing the rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ism and tour­ism will make it easi­er to under­stand why ter­ror­ists tar­get tour­ists.

Ter­ror­ism and tour­ism both cross nation­al bound­ar­ies, involve cit­izens of dif­fer­ent coun­tries, and bene­fit from travel and com­mu­nic­a­tion tech­no­lo­gies. In fact, ter­ror­ists inten­tion­ally tar­get tour­ists or tour­ism because it is an effect­ive way for the ter­ror­ists to reach their tar­gets. Tour­ists are tar­geted since they sym­bol­ic­ally rep­res­ent their coun­try and tar­get gov­ern­ments. The murder of a Jew­ish-Amer­ic­an pas­sen­ger on the Achille Lauro cruise ship, which was hijacked by Palestini­ans in 1985, is a demon­stra­tion of this.

In fact the pro­cess is very simple from a terrorist’s point of view. As products of dog­mat­ic thought and the rep­res­ent­at­ives and advoc­ates of cer­tain points of view, ter­ror­ists do not hes­it­ate to turn to tour­ism areas. There they can hide in plain sight. Large groups of tour­ists, who speak for­eign lan­guages and are as strange and dif­fer­ent to loc­als as they are to each oth­er, provide cov­er for ter­ror­ists who can wander among them without rais­ing sus­pi­cion. Present­ing as tour­ists them­selves, ter­ror­ists can shop using for­eign cur­ren­cies, stop and look at things, and take pic­tures, just as tour­ists do, as they scope out a tar­get and plan their attack.

Ter­ror­ists, who want to be recog­nised for their polit­ic­al points of view, see viol­ent acts and the pub­li­city they bring as a means to over­come cen­sor­ship or to under­score a sense of urgency. Ter­ror­ists know that to tar­get the cit­izens of mul­tiple coun­tries will attract more media atten­tion than if they tar­get only loc­als. With the inter­na­tion­al media interest that brings, their polit­ic­al issue is quickly elev­ated into a glob­al con­cern, which in turn raises ques­tions about the legit­im­acy of their tar­get gov­ern­ment or insti­tu­tion. The good pub­li­city for the ter­ror­ist is obvi­ously very bad for tour­ism, which has flow-on effects to the rest of the eco­nomy.

So, if we sum­mar­ize it, ter­ror­ists tar­get tour­ists to accom­plish their stra­tegic goals of pub­li­city, polit­ic­al instabil­ity, and eco­nom­ic harm.

Tourism as a trigger

Of course it is not always true to asso­ci­ate ter­ror­ists and ter­ror acts with organ­isa­tions with rad­ic­al polit­ic­al views or from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. Some­times tour­ism itself can trig­ger viol­ence.

For example, let’s con­sider a coun­try or region where divis­ive con­flicts arise between those who sup­port tour­ism devel­op­ment and those who oppose it. Ideas that tour­ism is respons­ible for the dis­rup­tion of loc­al industry and the cor­rup­tion of loc­al cul­ture, and per­cep­tions that tour­ism devel­op­ment does not bene­fit (or even harms) loc­al people, can polar­ise soci­ety and trig­ger viol­ence. In these cases it is import­ant to note that those who are involved in tour­ism devel­op­ment must act sens­it­ively and respons­ibly with the under­stand­ing that poorly con­ceived tour­ism can lead to bad, even viol­ent, reac­tions among some people in a des­tin­a­tion.

Fur­ther­more, tour­ists them­selves should be made aware that socio-eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al, and com­mu­nic­a­tion dif­fer­ences between them and their hosts can cause anger and trig­ger viol­ence. Tour­ists who, for example, show off their wealth, flag­rantly dis­respect loc­al cus­toms, or make unreas­on­able demands based on their own cul­tur­al expect­a­tions, may irrit­ate loc­al people, con­trib­ute to a build-up of anger, and cause viol­ent or ter­ror­ist actions when this anger is expressed in a dan­ger­ous way.

The economic harms of violence against tourism

Of course, it is inev­it­able that viol­ence no mat­ter its cause or motiv­a­tion, impacts eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment. Growth rates, for­eign trade rev­en­ues, exports, for­eign dir­ect invest­ments, and all oth­er inter­na­tion­al activ­it­ies of coun­tries sub­ject to ter­ror­ist acts are affected neg­at­ively. One of the most import­ant sources of for­eign exchange rev­en­ue for many coun­tries is tour­ism, espe­cially in devel­op­ing coun­tries where the income is very import­ant for solv­ing prob­lems such as unem­ploy­ment and liquid­ity.

It’s also worth remem­ber­ing that one of the big reas­ons that ter­ror­ists tar­get tour­ists is that if tour­ism is sup­por­ted by the state, or if the state relies upon tour­ism rev­en­ues, attacks against tour­ism will be per­ceived as attacks against the state. Since the tour­ism sec­tor is an import­ant source of eco­nom­ic activ­ity, ter­ror­ist attacks aimed at tour­ists will cause a decrease in for­eign exchange rev­en­ue pla­cing an extra eco­nom­ic bur­den on the gov­ern­ment.

The famed Sul­tan Ahmed Mosque or Sul­tan Ahmet Mosque or Blue Mosque in Istan­bul, Tur­key … deser­ted. (Pic sup­plied by author)

When did terror meet tourism?

Actu­ally, I gave the answer to this ques­tion earli­er. Yes, ter­ror and tour­ism were pain­fully intro­duced for the first time at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Since then they have con­tin­ued to meet. Let’s take a brief look at cases where ter­ror­ists have spe­cific­ally tar­geted tour­ism:

As a res­ult of the ter­ror­ist attack in the Val­ley of the Kings, Egypt in 1997, the tour­ism sec­tor suffered an estim­ated $ 1 bil­lion loss. The 700,000 people employed by the industry and close to 7 mil­lion cit­izens suffered eco­nom­ic­ally from the attack. Occu­pancy rates remained depressed for about two years.

One of the most strik­ing examples of ter­ror­is­m’s impact on a coun­try’s eco­nomy and tour­ism is undoubtedly the “Septem­ber 11” attacks in the US in 2001 in which four air­liners were hijacked and then aimed at tar­gets includ­ing the twin towers of the World Trade Cen­ter in New York as well as a “hard” tar­get, the Pentagon. Imme­di­ately after the attacks, in addi­tion to a decrease in the num­ber of domest­ic tour­ists, a sig­ni­fic­ant decrease in the num­ber of for­eign tour­ists arriv­ing in the US between 2001 and 2004 was observed.

How­ever, these attacks not only dam­aged the US eco­nomy (about US$ 105 bil­lion), but also eco­nom­ic activ­it­ies in oth­er coun­tries. In the Asia Pacific region, due to meas­ures taken and the expendit­ures made in the fight against ter­ror­ism, insur­ance costs and the cost of doing busi­ness increased and the pro­ductiv­ity of the region­al eco­nomy slowed down.

So many more ter­ror attacks on tour­ism facil­it­ies have occurred, one after the oth­er:

The 2002 bomb­ing of the Kuta tour­ism dis­trict in Bali, Indone­sia, killed 202 people and injured 209 oth­ers.

In 2004, 31 people were killed and 159 people were wounded in the ter­ror­ist act against the Hilton hotel in Taba, Egypt.

In 2005, 57 people lost their lives and 110 people were injured in the bomb­ings of three major hotels, the Hyatt, Radis­on SAS and Days Inn, in Amman, Jordan.

In 2005, explo­sions at places where tour­ists were con­cen­trated in Bali, Indone­sia, caused the deaths of 20 people and injur­ing 129 people.

In 2005, 88 people were killed and 150 people were injured dur­ing the ter­ror­ist acts in Ghazala Gar­dens Hotel and Sharm elSheikh, the resort city in the south­ern­most point of Sinai island of Egypt.

In 2008, more than 602 people were killed and more than 250 people were wounded in the ter­ror­ist attack on Mar­ri­ott Hotel in Islamabad, Pakistan.

… et cet­era.

Has terror always been targeted at Middle East or developing countries?

Of course not. Septem­ber 11 is the highest-pro­file example of that. In recent times espe­cially, ter­ror­ism has also tar­geted tour­ism des­tin­a­tions in Europe and oth­er developed coun­tries.

Dark times in the “city of light”, Par­is.

Let’s take a brief look at some cases in Europe:

In 2004, 191 people were killed and about 2,000 wounded in bomb attacks at three dif­fer­ent train sta­tions in Mad­rid, Spain.

In 2005, 56 people were killed and 700 were injured as a res­ult of a bomb attack in Lon­don, UK.

In 2011, 77 people lost their lives and more than 200 people injured in the bomb attack in Oslo, Nor­way.

In 2015, 146 people lost their lives and 379 people were injured in three sep­ar­ate bomb attacks car­ried out one after anoth­er in Par­is, France.

In 2016, 32 people were killed and 270 people were injured dur­ing bomb attacks against an air­port and metro sta­tion in Brus­sels, Bel­gi­um.

In 2016, 84 people were killed and 200 people were injured as a truck ploughed through crowds of Bastille Day cel­eb­rants in Nice, France.

… et cet­era.

The num­bers of people who died and were injured in past and recent ter­ror­ist acts in Europe and else­where show the solem­nity and sever­ity of ter­ror­ist acts. Recent ter­ror­ist acts in Europe, espe­cially in tour­ism regions, have ser­i­ously dam­aged the tour­ism eco­nomy. For example, the hotel occu­pancy rate, which was 82% a few days before the explo­sion in Brus­sels in 2016, saw a 25% drop in the week fol­low­ing. There was also a huge decline in flight reser­va­tions to Brus­sels. The after­math of the Par­is bomb­ings in 2015 saw hotel occu­pancy rates fall to 67%, a loss of 15.1% over pre­vi­ous years and air travel can­cel­la­tions skyrock­et. Sim­il­arly, as a res­ult of the explo­sion in Lon­don in 2016, hotel occu­pancy fell to 58%, a 27.7% decline.

Turkish tourism’s tussle with terror

Tur­key is at the fore­front of coun­tries that have to fight against ter­ror­ism, hav­ing fought against the Armeni­an Secret Army for the Lib­er­a­tion of Armenia (ASALA) between 1973 and 1985, and it now con­tin­ues to fight against the Partiya Kark­er­ên Kur­distanê (PKK or Kur­distan Work­ers Party), which was estab­lished in 1978. In addi­tion to the loss of more than 30,000 people’s lives in the struggle against the PKK, the Turk­ish eco­nomy has suffered major losses in almost every area, espe­cially in the tour­ism sec­tor.

Besides the PKK’s activ­it­ies, Islam­ic State or ISIS, which emerged in Syr­ia and Iraq to Turkey’s south, has begun to organ­ise ter­ror­ist acts in Tur­key. The num­ber of ter­ror­ist acts com­mit­ted in Tur­key over the last sev­en years, espe­cially to tour­ists and in tour­ism des­tin­a­tions, has begun to increase con­sid­er­ably, as seen in table 1, espe­cially in terms of sever­ity and num­ber of deaths:

These attacks have had ser­i­ous effects on tour­ism rev­en­ues, the num­ber of tour­ists com­ing to the coun­try, and the aver­age expendit­ure of tour­ists, as presen­ted in Table 2:

More cooperation, less conflict

Tour­ists are logic­al con­sumers who weigh up and decide upon products in terms of their price and per­form­ance, risk and reward. For this reas­on ter­ror­ist incid­ents in a region cause tour­ists to see the region as more risky. When we look at the rela­tion­ship between ter­ror­ism and tour­ism in this way, it is clear that terrorism’s effects on tour­ism can­not be under­es­tim­ated, and that the only way to remove these effects it to elim­in­ate ter­ror­ism.

Although ter­ror­ism can­not be abol­ished at this time, meas­ures and pre­cau­tions can be taken at nation­al and inter­na­tion­al levels to mit­ig­ate against poten­tial risks and emer­gen­cies that may be encountered in the tour­ism sec­tor. Nations that are fre­quently exposed to and struggle against ter­ror­ism should make every effort to cooper­ate. They should sup­port a com­mon defin­i­tion of ter­ror­ism accep­ted by all states; cut sup­port for states that in turn sup­port ter­ror­ism; pro­mote social peace, social justice and demo­cracy in their coun­tries; devel­op mar­ket­ing strategies, price pro­mo­tions, and pack­age tours to boost domest­ic tour­ism; and launch vari­ous pro­mo­tion­al cam­paigns to improve the coun­try’s image inter­na­tion­ally.

Author’s note: Read­ers will be provided sources indi­vidu­ally if reques­ted.

About the author

Ayşegül Acar com­pleted her under­gradu­ate stud­ies in tour­ism man­age­ment at Boğaziçi Uni­ver­sity, Tur­key before com­plet­ing her Mas­ter­’s degree at Istan­bul Uni­ver­sity in 2016. Ayşegül is pur­su­ing her Ph.D. at Istan­bul Uni­ver­sity while sim­ul­tan­eously under­tak­ing a second Mas­ter­’s with the Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment at Middle East Tech­nic­al Uni­ver­sity and work­ing as Research Assist­ant in the Depart­ment of Tour­ism Man­age­ment, Fac­ulty of Tour­ism, at Kar­abük Uni­ver­sity! Ayşegül’s research interests are the top­ics of ter­ror­ism and tour­ism, polit­ic­al instabil­ity and tour­ism, sus­tain­able tour­ism, as well as tour­ism account­ing and fin­ance.