Tourism and terrorism: conflictsand commonalities

Maximiliano E. KorstanjeDepartment of Economics, University of Palermo, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and

Anthony ClaytonInstitute for Sustainable Development, University of the West Indies,

Kingston, Jamaica

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore why tourists continue to visit troubled and oftenviolent nations, even when there is perceived risk. Tourism and terrorism reflect very differentphilosophies, but there are also some disturbing commonalities. Both need modern technology to beeffective, both rely heavily on media management and both require the manipulation of perceptionsand attitudes.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses historical evidence to examine the rise and fallin world travel and tourism demand related to acts of terrorism.

Findings – The paper observes that the Caribbean experienced a 13.5 percent decline in US visitorsafter the 9/11 terrorist attack in the USA and this led to the temporary loss of an estimated 365,000jobs.

Practical implications – The paper considers the fact that Jamaica suffers the equivalent of one9/11 incident each week in terms of the percentage of the population killed by organized crime andgangs. It concludes that crime does not have the same effect as terrorism in terms of deterring touristsand that tourists demonstrate a willingness to visit countries where security risks are significantlyhigher than in their home country.

Originality/value – The paper compares and contrasts the experience of 9/11 in New York with twobombings in Buenos Aires, and shows the remarkable extent to which even the experience ofsomething as shocking as a terrorist attack is mediated through cultural values.

Keywords Terrorism, Tourism, Commonalities, Dark tourism, Caribbean

Paper type General review

The nature of terrorismSaint-Pierre (2003) defines terrorism as a form of political violence, typically utilizedwhen one of the opposed factions has not the strength to overcome their enemymilitarily. The goal may then be to force the other side to concede by inflicting morecasualties and damage than they can bear. If the opponent is a government, the objectmay also be to turn their own citizens against them, by constantly reminding them thattheir government cannot protect them. Kondrasuk (2005, p. 646) defines terrorism as:

Premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetuated against non-combatant targets bysub-national groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.

Kondrasuk (2005) and Hoffman (2002) list terrorism’s key attributes as follows:. terrorists are not formal military groups, but pursue political and religious

causes, usually in a clandestine way;. terrorists threaten and perpetrate acts of extreme violence;

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Worldwide Hospitality and TourismThemesVol. 4 No. 1, 2012pp. 8-25q Emerald Group Publishing Limited1755-4217DOI 10.1108/17554211211198552

. the targets of terrorists are often vulnerable civilians; this is in order to promotefear in a wider audience; and

. the goals of terrorism are to influence high-level governmental decisions insupport of their political or religious objectives.

Terrorism has, however, changed significantly over the last three decades. Theparamilitaries in Northern Ireland, for example, had no intention of killing themselveswhen planting bombs, although a few did manage to blow themselves up by mistake.The suicide bombers used by the Tamil Tigers and Al-Qaeda, by contrast, do intend todie during the execution of their mission, which makes them an even more dangerousthreat. As Schmid (2004, p. 210) states:

The sacrifice can consist of attacking innocent people from the adversary’s camp or of aterrorist blowing himself or herself up in the midst of a group of guilty enemies. In that case,he sees himself as a martyr. The dimension of martyrdom links it to the activity that somescholars see as the most fundamental form of religiosity: the sacrifice.

Systematic terrorism (as practiced by, for example, ETA or the IRA) is usually focusedon specific demands, and the victims have to be seen as “legitimate”, i.e. members ofthe security forces or “collaborators”, although the definition of “legitimate” is oftenstretched to include anyone that is not an active supporter of the terrorist organization.Systematic terrorism is usually aimed at territorial autonomy, often with an additionalpolitical ideology (such as a socialist or one-party state), although the killing of politicalopponents in order to repress dissent is also a form of systematic terrorism. Bycontrast, random terrorism (as practiced by al-Qaeda) is usually aimed at thedestabilization or destruction of the existing political, religious or ideological order, andseeks maximum destruction in terms of killing and property damage.

This also maps onto patterns of faith. For example, Sunni Muslims believe in thecommunion of all believers, and some therefore reject the idea that faith can be limitedby national borders, or even that they should be citizens of a given nation. JihadiSalafism, in particular, emphasizes God’s sovereignty (hakimiyyat Allah), which definesgood and evil, is applicable in all places and at all times, and makes all forms ofpolitical organization, innovation, change or even reasoning redundant and un-Islamic.It is this minority view that emphasizes jihad against infidels, and encourages thekilling of apostates. Al Qaeda’s borderless operations and random terrorism reflect thisphilosophy. Shiia Muslims, however, generally see their faith as compatible withnational identity, and are therefore concerned with political power and control withinnational borders. The use of systematic terrorism in the post-Saddam conflict in Iraqreflected the views of the majority Shiite population.

Random terrorism may be targeted at the innocent and vulnerable, for two reasons.The first is that killing the innocent graphically demonstrates the state’s failure toprotect its citizens. Second, it helps to create revulsion, fear and panic. The combinationof anger, revulsion, fear and despair eventually obliges the State to concede some or allof the demands of the terrorists.

Tourists are usually both innocent and vulnerable. In addition, in some countries,they also represent mobility, affluence and consumption, which may be perceived ascorrupt and immoral.

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Terrorism, legality and moralityGoldblatt and Hu define terrorism as the illegal usage of force or acts of violence againstpersons or their properties in order to intimidate the Government, the citizenship or anyother segment of society (Goldblatt and Hu, 2005, p. 142). However, this nuanceddefinition is still limited, as there are countries where some elite groups exert violenceagainst others with impunity. Until the start of the Arab Spring uprisings, mostArabic-speaking nations had been ruled by unelected elites for decades, some of who hadruthlessly suppressed dissent, while there are still a few sub-Saharan states withkleptocratic, predatory governments. In these cases, terror is used as an instrument ofpower by the elite, rather than against the government. There are also cases where actsof terror are committed by agents provocateur, in order to justify further repression, orreflect internal power struggles within the elite, rather than against it. In some cases,totalitarianism is reflected in the destruction of alternative views and voices in the nameof patriotism, freedom, and brotherhood. Some of these countries are, at least notionally,democracies. However, as Bernstein has pointed out, democracies involve more than aritual (and possibly rigged) renewal every four or five years, healthy democracies havedeep cultural roots, including a tolerance for dissenting views (Bernstein, 2006), as wellas respect for the rules of the democratic process and for the outcome of the vote.

In some cases, terrorists operate both inside and outside the law, and both the IRAand ETA have had representation in Parliament while still using violence as a politicalweapon (Del Bufalo, 2002). This may represent a movement that is in transition awayfrom violence, but it often demonstrates bad faith, or a lack of faith in the democraticprocess, so the willingness to use violence effectively overrides peaceful diplomacy(Connolly, 1994).

Schmid argues that the Roman legal tradition distinguishes between two aspects ofcrime, Mala Prohibita (wrong because it is prohibited), and Mala Per Se (intrinsicallyevil). The former refers to an offense that is against the law, while the latter refers to apremeditated act of evil, irrespective of the legal system in place at the time. So, an actmay be evil, even if not specifically prohibited. All civilized nations consider terrorisman intrinsic evil, especially those acts that do not discriminate between combatants andcivilians. Indiscriminate acts of violence, such as bombs in public places, are regardedwith particular revulsion, partly because they target innocents, including children, andpartly because they flout the right of civilians to remain outside the conflict, whichbreaks the Hague and Geneva conventions (Schmid, 2004). There have been a numberof high-profile instances in recent years, including some aimed at western tourists andthe kinds of resorts and shopping malls that they frequent.

Conflicts and perceptionsTourism and terrorism appear, in some respects, to reflect deeply conflicting worldviews. Tourism involves freedom of movement and travel, and is a fairly effective wayof disseminating cultural ideas and practices. Terrorist movements have variouspermutations of religious, nationalist and ethnic motives, but many of them areconcerned to resist what they perceive to be oppression by others and the imposition offoreign rule or culture, and some (such as the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan)explicitly reject the western lifestyle on which most contemporary tourism is based.Tourism also represents a soft but economically valuable target, and tourists havebeen the victims in several mass-killings, in places such as Egypt and Bali.

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Yet there are also at least two commonalities:

(1) The same process of globalization and technological advance and disseminationthat has supported the growth of the world tourism industry has also made iteasier for terrorists to proselytise, recruit, train, fund-raise, organize, and travelto their targets. Tourism relies heavily, in particular, on safe, cheap, efficientmass-transport. One of the more shocking implications of 9/11, for many, wasthat the same structure of safe, cheap, efficient mass-transport also gaveal-Qaeda the ability to strike half-way around the planet, and on a far greaterscale than ever before. In addition, the strategy that underpinned this modernform of terrorism was not learned from ancient Islamic texts, but from moderntraining techniques, tactics and internet downloads, thus converting theproducts of western technological development into weapons against the west.

(2) Both tourism and terrorism rely on media management; the creation andmanipulation of beliefs and perceptions. Media management is crucial to thetravel and tourism industry. It is important to persuade customers that aparticular experience or destination is desirable, and that your hotel or airlineoffers a better service than that of rivals, in order to ensure the continuing flowof business and profits. Media management is also crucial to terroristorganizations, who must try to demoralize their numerically-superior opponentsand convince them that they cannot win. Al-Qaeda also wanted “spectaculars”,highly-visible mass killings, partly to achieve the desired impact against thewest, but also partly to ensure the continuing flow of funds and recruits.

With regard to the first commonality; after 9/11/2001, many countries adopted tougherpolicies to control and reinforce security at their borders, partly because of the fear thatterrorists or materiel might enter the country, and many authors have emphasized theperceived connection between terrorism and patterns of trade (Barro, 1991) (Pollins,1989) (Abadie and Gardeazabal, 2003) (Phillips, 2008). This defines terrorism as analien threat, even though some countries – such as the UK, Italy, Germany andSweden – have had more serious problems with ‘home-grown’ terrorists. So the realthreat may not be people, but malign ideas – and these ideas can now spread freelyover the internet, making it impossible to stop them at national frontiers. As Skoll(2007) points out, political violence now works like a virus, being transmitted throughcontact.

In addition, the first countries to give strong international support and explicitlyaligned themselves with the USA were those that had had similar experiences ofterrorism, such as Spain and the UK (Altheide, 2009). That had the effect of definingterrorism as a threat to the entire west. So, these two actions had the subtle effect ofdefining terrorism as:

(1) Coming from outside.

(2) Opposed to all western values.

With regard to the second commonality; major terrorist incidents have both a realimpact and a symbolic meaning. For example, are the perpetrators “fanatical killers”,or “heroic freedom fighters”? There is therefore a war of ideas, as well as a war in thestreets, as the two sides try to impose their interpretation of events. The bombing of theWorld Trade Centre and the 9/11 attacks were recent examples, but there is a long

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history of propaganda offensives to mislead the enemy or damage their morale, andstruggles to control the narrative that will shape world opinion, such as that betweenIsraelis and Palestinians, each of whom wants to define themselves as the victim andthe other as the aggressor. There are also attempts to reinterpret or revise historicalevents to support a current ideology. For example, right-wing elements in Germanyreinterpreted the end of the First World War to argue that the German Army had notlost the war; it had been betrayed by the republicans in Germany who overthrew themonarchy, thereby creating the legend of the stab-in-the-back (Dolchstoßlegende),which, 15 years later, assisted the Nazis in their rise to power. So it is important to lookat both the actual event, and at the way that the event is portrayed, explained andunderstood.

The impact of a terrorist incident also partly depends on both context andexperience. For example, the global consternation caused by 9/11 eclipsed most otherterrorist incidents, even though many more people have died in places such as Iraq andAfghanistan. The shock caused by 9/11 was partly due to the demonstration that theworld’s superpower was as vulnerable to terrorist attack everyone else, which blurredthe boundaries between rich, secure nations and poor, vulnerable nations. Similarly,most terrorist incidents in Europe have not had the same era-defining impact as 9/11,which probably reflects both that European states have been dealing with terrorism fordecades, and that many US citizens had perceived war as something that happenssomewhere else.

The importance of context, culture and history can been seen by contrasting theexperience of 9/11 in New York with two bombings in Buenos Aires; Israel’s embassyin 1992 and the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) in 1994. 9/11permanently changed the way that Americans see terrorist issues and threats(Kondrasuk, 2005). The USA, goaded and wounded, looked outside for the threat, andlaunched wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Ground Zero became akin to a sacred site,commemorating the victims and the fight against evil. In Buenos Aires, the Jewishcommunity became further isolated, the site of the bombings is avoided, and manyArgentines remain silent about the topic.

With regard to 9/11, the responses can be summarized as follows:. The event received global media coverage. The world’s superpower was under

attack. Four commercial airplanes, with civilians on board, were used to attackboth civilian and military targets.

. The events were portrayed in the USA as evil, requiring a muscular, militaryresponse (as opposed to, for example, a long-term intelligence-led strategy toundermine the Salafists).

. Since mass air travel was the chosen weapon of the terrorists, there waswidespread public alarm about air travel, and the tourism and hospitalityindustries were severely affected.

. Al-Qaeda boasted their ownership of the attack, while the FBI soon determinedthat the key perpetrators had been living (and being trained) in the USA for somemonths prior to the event. As a result, the USA clamped down in illegalmigration, strengthened border controls and introduced new visa requirementsand procedures.

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. 9/11 transformed the way that terrorism was perceived and portrayed. This canbe seen in the large number of studies, books, and movies made with terrorismthemes (Mccartney, 2008; Sackett and Botterill, 2006; Prideaux, 2005; Kozak et al.,2007; Yuan, 2005).

. 9/11 had a profound effect on US domestic politics, as a possible factor in there-election of George W Bush, as well as altering the USA’s foreign priorities andinternational relationships.

. Unlike the events in Buenos Aires, where Argentinian authorities minimized(even trivialized) the attacks, both of the two main political parties in the USAadopted a strong narrative based on brotherhood and patriotism.

. Before 9/11, many Americans were mainly concerned about the levels of crime,especially in the major cities. After 9/11, this issue was largely eclipsed byconcerns about homeland security and terrorism.

. The site of the former Twin Towers has been converted into a memorial,celebrating bravery, sacrifice, and the death of innocents.

With regard to the bombings in Buenos Aires; the Israeli embassy was destroyed,along with a nearby Catholic Church and a school, on the 17 March 1992 by a suicidebomber driving a pick-up truck packed with explosives. 29 people were killed, and 242were wounded. Israel sent specialists, who worked in cooperation with Argentinianauthorities, and determined that the attack had been planned in the tri-border areawhere the boundaries of Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina meet.

On the 18 July 1994, the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) wasbombed; 85 people were killed, and hundreds injured. For years afterwards, the casewas characterized by contradiction, confusion, controversies, accusations of cover-upsand corruption at the highest level in the Menem administration. The first to beaccused of the crime were police officers, but there was insufficient evidence to convict,and they were released in 2004. In October 2006, Argentine prosecutors AlbertoNisman and Marcelo Martinez Burgos formally accused the government of Iran ofdirecting the bombing, and the Hezbollah militia of carrying it out. According to theprosecutors Argentina had been targeted by Iran after the Government’s decision tosuspend a nuclear technology transfer contract with Tehran. This finding wascontroversial, however, because the contract was never actually terminated, and Iranand Argentina were negotiating on the restoration of full cooperation on all agreementsfrom early in 1992 till 1994, when the bombing occurred.

The response to the bombings in Buenos Aires had quite different characteristics:. The event did not attract sustained international attention. It was seen as a local

case, and soon faded from prominence. It was seen as evidence of pathology andsocial fragmentation, and widely discussed as such by social scientists in Argentina.

. After the event, many people in Buenos Aires avoided synagogues and Jewishcultural associations. The enemy was not seen as coming from outside, societydid not feel a sense of cohesion, and the victims were further isolated.

. The mass transport system and airspace were not involved in these attacks, and thetourism and hospitality industries were not directly affected. Due to the favourableexchange rate at the time, Argentina became a net tourism exporting country, andthe local industry suffered, but this was unrelated to the terrorist attacks.

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. The names of the perpetrators remain unknown. Argentinian authoritiesexpressed sympathy with the Jewish community, but did not succeed indetermining the cause or identifying or arresting the perpetrators. Nor did theydevelop a systematic framework to fight against terrorism.

. Many members of Argentinian society said that they did not feel that theseattacks were not against them but against the Jewish community – even thoughthe Jewish community had been a deep-rooted part of Argentinian society.

. Argentinian society is, today, more concerned about crime, poverty andunemployment than the possibility of future bombings.

. After the attacks, both the Israeli embassy and AMIA were relocated to othersites for security purposes. The sites of the bombing were given modestmemorials. In New York, Ground Zero became a symbol of patriotism, but inBuenos Aires the sites were hidden by silence.

These markedly divergent reactions happened for a number of reasons. In the USA,terrorism was seen as an atrocity perpetrated from abroad. In Argentina, however, thenational experience of terrorism was that perpetrated by the State itself, with thekilling of dissidents in the “dirty war”, during the military dictatorships that lastedfrom 1976-1982, until the last Junta lost the Malvinas/Falkland Islands war with theUK, and with it their credibility and raison d’etre. In Argentina, therefore, the reactionto the terrorist bombings reflected the national experience and history, awakeningmemories of military dictators that perpetrated crimes against humanity. So, while thebombings of the embassy and the AMIA increased cohesion among the small Jewishcommunity in Buenos Aires, many non-Jewish Argentines did not demonstratesolidarity, perhaps because of a reawakened sense of fear.

As Andersen (2011) says:

For many in Latin America, state power has historically cast a shadow on both personalsecurity and human rights. The debate about its ultimate ownership, purposes, and outcomescontinues. The legacy of state security forces in most countries is one in which political rightsand civil liberties were severely conditioned or were perhaps the object of full-scale assault forsome of the population.

So where 9/11 increased American feelings of patriotism, the Buenos Aires bombingsincreased social fragmentation, isolating the victims. Just as US citizens avoided flyingand travelling abroad, as they felt that they had become a target for terrorism, soArgentine society avoided its own Jewish community, because association was seen asa risk. As Green (2010) says:

Soon after the 1994 bombing, Moishe Cohen, the cultural director of AMIA, gathered severaldozen leading sculptors and architects at the site of colonial ruins south of Buenos Aires.Cohen and others had witnessed the hemorrhaging of the Jewish community since the attack.Jews had stopped attending synagogue or even sending their children to school. He asked thegroup of artists to study the ruins and to imagine a new space that would welcome peopleback. The objective was not to alleviate fears among Jews, but to show to the greater public“que estamos presentes” he said, “that we are here”. But the design of the rebuilt AMIAbuilding reveals a new relationship with the city. Separated from the street by a fortifiedsecurity entrance that acts as a blast wall, the new building looms over the original site,which appears vacant, presenting itself as a kind of fortress. The passersby are not allowed

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into the building without a scheduled appointment and proof of identity. Taxis cannot stop infront of the building and photos are not allowed. The question invariably is whether theJewish community in Argentina will ever recover the sense of security and purpose it once felt(Green, 2010, p. 87).

It is clear, therefore, that there are important local factors that strongly influence howterrorism is perceived and defined (Altheide, 2009). It is important, to take this factorinto consideration, especially as terrorism has now been described as the primarysecurity threat of the twenty-first century (Robertson, 2002).

It is even more important, however, to put the impact of terrorism into context, and,in particular, to note that crime kills far more people than terrorism. For example, some3,506 people were killed during the conflict in Northern Ireland (current population 1.8million). The conflict lasted 32 years, so there was an average of 110 deaths per annum.Jamaica (current population 2.8 million) had 1,680 homicides in 2009, mainlygang-related. So the rate of killing in Jamaica, most of which is the result of organizedcrime, is about 15 times the rate in the insurgency in Northern Ireland, or about 10times higher on a per capita basis.

Similarly, some 50,000 people have been killed over the last five years in Mexico’s“war on drugs”, for example, which is approximately 17 times more than died on 9/11.This means that Mexico suffers the equivalent of three 9/11s each year. Mexico’spopulation is just over 1/3rd of that of the USA, so, on a per capita basis, Mexico suffersthe equivalent of nearly nine 9/11’s each year.

The comparison with Jamaica is even more extreme, because of Jamaica’s muchsmaller population. In terms of the percentage of the population killed by organizedcrime and gangs, Jamaica suffers the equivalent of one 9/11 incident each week.

As President Calderon of Mexico said, in a speech to the UN in September 2011:

We have to be aware that organized crime today is killing more people and more youngpeople than all the dictatorial regimes in the world.

This again highlights the extraordinary emotional impact of terrorism. When murder isdefined as terrorism, rather than a crime, states usually respond as if it were a militarythreat, rather than one requiring policing, which means that the cost of the responseescalates dramatically. This is often, of course, exactly what the terrorists want.

Defining the enemyThe social impact of 9/11 was comparable, in some respects, to Pearl Harbor (Kepel,2002) but both episodes have quite different characteristics. Whereas Pearl Harbor wasan attack against a military base with conventional weapons, the attack against theTwin Towers in New York was an assault on an economic, trade, communications andtransport hub; the same modes of organization and technological prowess that firstdistinguished the west from the rest of the world were targeted, and symbolicallyutilized against the same state. Nye (2011) pointed out that Al-Qaeda actually killedmore Americans on 9/11 than the Japanese Navy did at Pearl Harbour in 1941, andargued that this reflected one of the great power shifts of this generation; the rise ofnon-state actors, and what he termed the “privatization of war”.

In this modern, post-9/11 context, many studies have focused on the negativeimpacts of terrorism on the tourism and hospitality industry. There have been adiversity of viewpoints, but most of the scholarship has been primarily concerned to

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prevent an event of this nature from happening again in future. More recently,however, some authors have re-examined the terrorism-related literature from a morecritical perspective, and have responded in different ways, some of which conflict.While some scholars argue that government should take a proactive counter-terrorismpolicy in view of the threat from Islamist culture (Salafist jihadism in particular) forwestern values (Fukuyama, 1989) (Huntington, 1993, 1997) (Kristol and Kagan, 1996)(Vargas Llosa, 2002) (Rashid, 2002) (Kepel, 2002) (Keohane and Zeckhauser, 2003)(Susstein, 2005) (Pojman, 2006), others have argued that the militarized response hasactually served the interests of particular politicians, factions within the military, theintelligence community, private security contractors and weapons manufacturers, whohave therefore a vested interest in manipulating fear to prolong the crisis and theassociated flow of resources (Somnez, 1998) (Altheide, 2006, 2009) (Sontag, 2002) (Said,2001) (Holloway and Palaez, 2002) (Bernstein, 2006) (Baudrillard, 1995a, b, 2006) (Gray,2007) (Smaw, 2008) (Corey, 2009) (Wolin, 2010).

Gibson, Pennington-Gray and Thapa argue that one of the deeper and more subtleimpacts of terrorism is to change the structures of society by supporting a nationaldiscourse that reinforces the power of dominant groups (Floyd et al., 2003), possiblybecause they are seen as being able to provide protection. It is true that manypoliticians, particularly those whose domestic policies have been unsuccessful, havefound it politically expedient to try to focus animosity on an external enemy. The senseof a common threat does tend to promote group cohesion, which an astute politiciancan then exploit by positioning themselves as a champion of the values or the identitythat is under threat.

This creates a strange paradox; the terrorist needs to provoke a reaction in order toensure a continuing flow of recruits and funding, the politician needs to be seen to beleading the reaction in order to ensure a continuing flow of votes, and the military andarmaments industry need to demonstrate their capability in order to ensure continuingappropriations. Thus, the domestic agendas of various parties interlock in a way thatcan effectively preclude the consideration of other strategic options.

The role of media management in economic warfareThe cost to the USA of the military and security measures implemented since 9/11 isestimated to be approximately US$3.2 trillion. It is estimated that it cost Al-Qaedaabout US$500,000 to organize the 9/11 attacks, so for every dollar it cost Osama binLaden to mount the attack, the USA has now spent US$6,456,000. Bin Laden wasreported to have said that his goal was to bankrupt the USA, so that may have been histarget. As Nye (2011) has pointed out, the trillion-plus dollars of unfunded war coststhat followed 9/11 contributed to the budget deficit that is now crippling the USeconomy today, so Al-Qaeda did succeed in directly eroding American hard power, aswell as US leadership and moral authority, thereby accelerating the relative decline ofthe US hegemony and the transfer of power to Asia.

This extraordinarily costly response has been encouraged by a number of pictures,films and TV programs that have given terrorism an extraordinary potency, to theextent that many now consider terrorists the main threat to western freedom. This canbe seen in the mythical archetype of terrorists, largely constructed since 9/11, asruthless enemies with motives that are rarely explored, but are generally portrayed asevil, nihilistic and totalitarian, which clearly has some resonance with the wider

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political discourse (Howie, 2009), Corey (2009), Bernstein (2006), Zizek (2009), Altheide(2006) and Baudrillard (1995a, b).

The reality, however, is that Al-Qaeda never posed the same existential threat to thewest as, for example, the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. So Al-Qaeda hasinflicted greater economic damage on the USA, with far less actual military capability,than the Soviets. This outcome was probably driven, in part, by the natural fearinspired by an enemy that appears willing to die, which was deliberately reinforced inthe purported al-Qaeda tape released on March 14 2004 that stated “You love life andwe love death”. These actions and statements resulted in a widespread emotionalreaction that weighed against a more deliberate, targeted response.

The perception of riskOne of the reasons why media management plays such a key role in economic warfareis that it has a significant influence on the perception of risk. After 9/11, this effectcould be seen particularly clearly in the travel and tourism sectors. The securityresponse in the wake of 9/11 imposed significant additional security costs on airportsand airlines, but the marked decline in passenger revenues was even more costly, aspassenger numbers did not return to 2000 levels until 2003, and airline revenues didnot recover until 2004. Between 2002 and 2005, some of the major operators in the USmarket, including United, Delta, Northwest and US Airways, were obliged to file forChapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The main cause was that many US citizens temporarily stopped flying. Thisresponse was actually based on a misperception of risk, because those US citizens didnot stop travelling, but many of them chose to drive rather than fly. However, about44,000 people die annually in car accidents in the USA, while about 200 die in aircraftaccidents. Flying is far safer than driving, measured by passenger/kilometer (in fact,flying is safer than taking a bath – about 325 US citizens drown in their bath eachyear). So, as a result of choosing to drive instead of flying, about 1,595 additionalpeople died in car accidents. Some 2,976 people died during the 9/11 attack. So thenumber of fatalities caused by 9/11 increased by over 50 percent because of the waythat people misunderstand risk, and act on the basis of perceptions, rather than reality.

Avoidance of perceived risk is a common response to terrorism. Kuto and Grovesfound that the bombings of US targets in Nairobi, Kenya resulted in 90 percent of theinbound international flights being cancelled, which caused serious harm for aneconomy with a high dependence on international tourism (Kuto and Groves, 2004).

An investigation by Alhfeldt, Franke and Meanning of risk perception amongGerman tourists found that Muslim tourist destinations fell sharply in terms of theirperceived attractiveness immediately after 9/11. So, the perception of risk hadimmediately generalized from the USA to the entire west, and the source of the risk hadgeneralized to be all Muslim countries. This shows that geographical proximity doesnot necessarily correspond with the perception of a destination as being dangerous,and that even a perceived ethnic affinity can be sufficient to raise the risk profile. Laterterrorist attacks in Tunisia (2002), Indonesia (2002) and Morocco (2003) created lessmarked shifts in the perceptions of German tourists, suggesting that terrorist attacksin the Middle East were actually seen as less dangerous than terrorist attacks in theUSA, indicating that Muslim-on-Muslim terrorism was seen as less frightening than aMuslim attack on westerners (Ahlfeldt et al., 2009).

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Bianchi suggests that fear and the perception of risk tends to correspond with theperception of “otherness”, which implies that acts of terrorism are so shocking becausethey break the sense of distance that allows tourists to feel safe and comfortable evenin countries that have high levels of violence (Bianchi, 2007).

It was not until 2007 that the total volume of international tourism to the USrecovered to the pre-2001 level. The more stringent security checks, including demandsfor detailed pre-flight information to be supplied online before travel, reduced theappeal of the US tourism market, which saw a decline in arrivals share. The USaccounted for 7.3 percent of global arrivals in 1999, but this had fallen to 6.2 percent in2010.

The US serves as a key feeder market for many foreign destinations, which alsosuffered. Many Caribbean destinations, for example, had to discount heavily to tryto maintain room occupancy, and have then found it difficult to revert to theirformer prices, even ten years later. Destinations in the Middle East were also badlyaffected.

As a result, a number of studies then focused on the relationship between terrorismand tourism, and on the perceived risks of travelers regarding certain foreigndestinations (Weber, 1998) (Domınguez et al., 2003) (Kuto and Groves, 2004) (Aziz,1995) (Castano, 2005) (Robson, 2005) (Mccartney, 2008) (Schluter, 2008) (Floyd andPennington-Gray, 2004) (Paraskevas and Arendell, 2007) (Sackett and Botterill, 2006)(Essner, 2003) (Arana and Leon, 2008) (Bhattarai et al., 2005) (Goldblatt and Hu, 2005)(Tarlow, 2003) (Hall, 2002) (Prideaux, 2005) (Kozak et al., 2007) (Yuan, 2005). Peattieet al. (2005) focused on two related aspects of the problem: safety and security. Whereasthe former includes any physical harm that can befall tourists in accidents, the latterrefers to the potential harm to a tourist in cases that include crime, violent crime andterrorism. In some of these cases, tourists are potentially more vulnerable to riskspecifically because they are strangers, and so not familiar with the local terrain(Peattie et al., 2005, p. 400). Tarlow has suggested that the security of guests is nowpivotal to the industry.

Perception, sensitivity and resilienceSackett and Botterill (2006) found that the perception of risk varies according toproximity to the site and the nationality of the tourists. For example, 72 percent of UStourists felt that their risks had increased after the 9/11 attack, compared to 42 percentof British tourists (42 percent), while 28 percent of Americans perceived thatinternational flights were risky, compared to 12 percent of British tourists. Schluter(2008) and Domınguez et al. (2003)) have similar findings. However, these were smalland not necessarily statistically representative samples, so the findings cannot begeneralized.

Domınguez et al. (2003)) regarding the impact of 9/11 on demand for destinations inMexico found that business travel was less sensitive than leisure travel. Similarfindings have been reported by Reichel et al. (2007) and Schluter (2008).

Castano has examined the numbers of arrivals from 2000 to 2003 in cities such asMombasa, New York, Madrid, London, Bali and Cairo, and found that these allexperienced significant downfalls in the numbers of arrivals after terrorist incidents,but all recovered with time (Castano, 2005), indicating the resilience of the industry.

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When and why do tourists become targets?The mainstream literature emphasizes the role of tourism as an agent of economicdevelopment and growth for many developing countries. Terrorism is often seen asregressive, anti-liberal, anti-foreigner, anti-globalization, and the free dissemination ofideas, and so based on a diametrically opposed philosophy.

Grosspietsch suggests that tourism and terrorism are inextricably intertwined insome countries because of the disparity between the relative affluence of the visitorsand the poverty of some of the locals fosters resentment, exacerbated by the economicdependence of the host nation on the feeder nation (Grosspietsch, 2005). This may betrue in cases where a sense of grievance against western culture is further irritated byluxury tourism, and what is perceived to be immodest behavior, but this cannotexplain the many cases where these particular conditions appear to be absent, such asthe Bali nightclub bombings.

It is true that economic dependence among developing and developed countries issubstantially increased whenever the former adopts tourism as a mainstream industry.In addition, most tourist businesses in developing countries employ local labour for themajority of positions, but many of these are relatively junior, whereas profits accrue tothe owners and investors, who may in some cases be foreign. This can make tourismlook like a visible representation of inequality, especially when the investors are fromcountries that maintain immigration barriers against the nations that host the hotels,and when guests openly show behavior and values that are considered unacceptablelocally.

Terrorism and ethnic hatred, and the violent repudiation that leads to the death ofinnocents, contains a powerful message. Many terrorists are not from poorbackgrounds, but are often better-educated and more mobile than average. Somethat have committed terrorist attacks against western targets were born or educated inthe west, or in westernized schools and universities in their own countries. The deepambivalence and frustration of feeling ashamed by a more technologically advancedand progressive culture can explain, in part, the despair (Zizek, 2009, p. 12), rage, andviolence. So, in some cases, this can be focused on tourists, as the most accessible andvisible representatives of the foreign intrusion.

Terrorism and dark tourismSeveral years ago, a newspaper in Italy published a photograph showing two touristssunbathing while a corpse (probably an illegal immigrant who had drowned at sea) laywashed up on the beach, clearly visible in the background. Many readers found theapparent callousness disturbing. However, much the same accusation could be madeagainst terrorists who plant bombs in public places, although there is still an obviousdifference between actively planning the deaths of others, and merely refusing to haveone’s holiday plans disrupted.

The extraordinary resilience and adaptability of the tourism industry can be seen inthe fact that the devastation caused by terrorism and natural disasters can itselfbecome a major tourist attraction, in some cases perhaps encouraged by the deepdiscounts that local hotels may be obliged to offer. Some travelers want to tourhistorical battlefields, or museums that commemorate genocide, slavery or otherhorrors, others are interested in visiting more recent battlefields (such as in Vietnam),while some want to get close to current zones of conflict, in places such as Israel,

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Colombia, and Afghanistan, while the sacralization of iconic sites (such as Ground Zeroin New York) means that they also become commercialized as a tourist destination.

This phenomenon of “dark tourism” has been widely studied. See, for example,Strange and Kempa, 2003, Miles, 2002, Stone and Sharpley, 2008, Smith, 2010, andsome authors have suggested that the suffering of others is commoditized, mediatedand transformed into an “experience” that can be delivered to a large number ofcustomers.

This raises some disturbing issues about the moral boundary between the acts andevents that are considered acceptable, and those that are not. There is a human appetitefor vicarious thrill seeking, which can be seen in a variety of relatively harmless formsin roller coasters and action films. Sometimes, real acts of terrorism are re-enacted; oneUS television channel has a regular program called “Seconds to Disaster”, whichre-enacts recent airline disasters, including those caused by terrorism, which can thenbe viewed by relatives and friends of those who died. Some commercial films nowcontain graphic depictions of sadistic torture, which has further blurred the boundariesbetween entertainment and reality, as many people now access internet pictures andvideos of public executions, such as that of Saddam Hussein, of prisoners beinghumiliated and tortured in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, or of the Talibandecapitating Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter. Some of the videos on theinternet are of real events, others are faked, but for many people entertainment videosand videos of real killings are being viewed for the same purpose, the entertainmentvalue of vicarious fear.

ConclusionsThere are a number of conclusions that can be drawn. First, tourism and terrorismreflect very different philosophies, but there are also some strange and sometimesdisturbing commonalities. Both need modern technology to be effective today, bothrely heavily on media management and both require the manipulation of perceptionsand attitudes. Tourists may be the specific targets of terrorists, but the sites of terroristatrocities can become visitor attractions for dark tourism.

Yet the extraordinary resilience and adaptability of the tourism industry is to becelebrated. Many countries depend on the industry, of course, to generate a significantfraction of their foreign exchange income and employment. Perhaps even moreimportant than that practical consideration, however, is the fact that a world in whichpeople can travel, visit each other, and learn other languages and cultures is a worldthat values liberty, innovation, enterprise and tolerance. A world that rejects thesevalues would be an infinitely bleaker place.

Terrorism is, sadly, unlikely to disappear. It is more likely that it will evolve intonew and more fluid forms, as technology enables new forms of networking around theworld, and accelerates the dissemination of evil ideas, as well as good.

It is encouraging, however, to see that there are times when entire nations changetheir course, and choose freedom and democracy over sectarianism and oppression. AsNigel Inkster, a former deputy head of Britain’s intelligence service, pointed out in aninterview with the BBC (published 7 May 2011):

Ayman Al-Zawahiri (al-Qaeda’s number two) has been trying to overthrow Egyptian regimesfor the last 30 years by violence, and a group of middle-class activists armed with cell phones

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managed to achieve it in under one month. This is hardly a resounding endorsement for thejihadist business model.

Similarly, as Ahmed Rashid pointed out in an article in the Financial Times on 2 May2011:

In fact, it is young people at the heart of the Arab revolt who are rebelling not for jihad but forfreedom and democracy. We should not forget that Bin Laden’s failure to win support in theArab world, despite 30 years of trying, has led to the near total rejection of the global jihadistidea by his fellow Muslims.

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Further reading

Bauman, Z. (2007), Consuming Life, Polity Press, London.

Giucci, G. (2007), The Cultural Life of Automobile, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Quilmes.

Khatchikian, M. (2000), Historia del Turismo, Universidad San Martın de Porres, Lima.

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Schmid, A. and Jongman, A. (1988), Political Terrorism, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, NJ.

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Wong, J.Y. and Yeh, C. (2009), “Tourist hesitation in destination decision making”, Annals ofTourism Research, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 6-23.

Young-Sook, L. (2006), “The Korean War and tourism: legacy of the war on the development ofthe tourism industry in South Korea”, International Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 8No. 3, pp. 157-70.

About the authorsProfessor Maximiliano E. Korstanje is Tourism BA, Anthropologist (University of Moron,Argentina) and has a PhD in Social Psychology (University John. F. Kennedy, Argentina). Hisareas of expertise include the study of panic in disaster situations in both modern and ancienttimes (Roman Empire), the risk perception theory applied to travel and tourism, the role that

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mass media plays after disasters and resilience in the process of reconstruction, and theconsequences of 9/11 for tourism and hospitality.

Professor Anthony Clayton MA, PhD, FCAS is the Alcan Professor of Caribbean SustainableDevelopment at the University of the West Indies, Visiting Professor at the Centre forEnvironmental Strategy in the School of Engineering at the University of Surrey, VisitingProfessor at the Institute for Studies of Science, Technology and Innovation in the School ofSocial and Political Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Adjunct Distinguished Professor ofSustainable Development in the Faculty of Business and Management, University ofTechnology, and Fellow of the Caribbean Academy of Science. His research interests includepolicy analysis and strategic planning. He has undertaken policy studies for many governmentsand intergovernmental agencies. Anthony Clayton is the corresponding author and can becontacted at: anthony.clayton@uwimona.edu.jm

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