Volume 1, Issue 1

Since the turn of the millenium numerous tourist crises (terrorist attacks, epidemics and natural disasters) influence the travel behaviour of tourists worldwide. The investigation of the crises effects in tourism research is still in its infancy, only a few studies and publications refer to this subject. This article tries to systematize the risk and crises research in tourism in reference to terrorist attacks and to summarize the state of the art on causes and effects of attacks on tourism. Based on the existent findings new unexplored research questions are developed and should contribute to the further development and establishment of the risk and crises research as a new research field in tourism science.

The article focuses on the complex interacting conditions, which are regarded as causal for the development of the „new“ transnational terrorism in the sociological discourse, and deduces the preference of the terrorism for touristic active areas from them. The result points out, that in short-term terroristic attacks necessarily lead to loss-effects on many different levels of the tourism industry, however on a medium- and long-term-basis terrorist attacks are being compensated and there is no total collapse of the touristic system to be suspected.

Effects of terrorism on tourism can be seen in numbers of tourist arrivals or in terms of saftey and security. Beyond these perspectives, the article develops a social and cultural theory perspective. Terrorism, tourism, and their relationships are interpreted as postmodern phenomena.

This article reviews the economic literature on the economic and social costs of terrorism with a special emphasis on the consequences on the tourism industry. Several studies find a negative and economically important effect of terrorism on tourism demand. The studies also highlight differences in the consequences of different types of terror attacks, causality, the temporal patterns of the impact as well as interdependencies between different countries’ tourism industries and their terrorist campaigns. Further, the paper briefly discusses studies on the consequences on foreign direct investment, consumption, savings and investment, international trade, overall economic development and on subjective life satisfaction.

The difficulties when trying to define the concept of terrorism as well as the Eurocentric view which dominates the use of the term in the western media is the starting point of this contribution. From the point of view of the southern Mediterranean coast the ambiguous impacts of the tourism development in an Islamic society it reflected. Taking into consideration the different consequences and induced socio-cultural tensions a more responsible tourism which is marked by mutual respect and understanding is proposed as a vision for conciliating the host with the guest society.