What makes tourism a target for terrorists?
Of all possible landmarks in a country, tourist areas and resorts seem to be targeted a lot by terrorists. For which reasons?
Convenience
Tourist resorts are a convenient place for terrorists to act. As people on holidays there come from a variety of backgrounds, it is comparatively easier for terrorists to act undetected. Using foreign change and mingling with travelers is more convenient in touristic facilities than in other places. As the Sousse attacks in Tunisia proved in 2015, a local citizen can easily bypass security by hiding a weapon in a beach umbrella, approach foreign tourists on the beach or in a hotel without arousing suspicion, and wreaking havoc. For terrorist organizations targeting foreigners, tourist resorts are a rare opportunity as the target is brought directly to the attackers.
Media attention
Whenever travelers from a country are taken hostage, injured or killed abroad, they receive immediate media attention in their home country. News outlets tend to spontaneously create a dramatized narrative around the event and the terrorist group that claims the act. Nowadays, terrorist attacks have grown so commonplace that media coverage is only substantial in a given country when there are citizens of this very country among the victims. Cynical as it may seem, we care most about our fellow countrymen when it comes to disasters and catastrophes : when the Brussels bombings happened, in March 2016, they received phenomenal attention in Europe. And yet the Ankara bombings in Turkey a few days before received very little media coverage, in spite of a higher victim count.
Besides, as the media coverage is foreign, the perpetrators of the attacks circumvent the possibility of censorship by an authoritarian local government. As the story is relayed by various news outlets, as well as social media, terrorist organizations are able to gather a substantial presence on the international scene.
“By capturing the media agenda for days or weeks, such groups can hope to increase their profile and amplify their message; enhance their relative moral legitimacy; and improve their organizational effectiveness”
(Weimann and Winn 1994, p. 143).
Symbolism and ideology
Tourists can symbolize various elements, from the point of view of potential attackers: conspicuous consumption, citizenship from an “enemy” country, behaviors that go against Islamic norms (alcohol, pork, provocative clothes…). all those elements can justify the killing of tourists in the name of the protection of sacred beliefs.
Simply put, the literature demonstrates that tourism can be the message as well as the medium of communication initiated by terrorists. Tourism can inspire terrorist violence by fueling political, religious, socioeconomic, or cultural
resentment and be used as a cost-effective instrument to deliver a broader message of ideological/political opposition. In either case, the choice of the tourist as target is not coincidental. For terrorists, the symbolism, high profile, and
news value of the international traveler are too valuable to be left unexploited.
(‘Tourism in Crisis: Managing the Effects of Terrorism’, Sönmez, Apostolopoulos, Tarlow)
Economic consequences
Targeting tourists isn’t only about killing foreigners and sending a message, though. It is a way of hurting the economy of the attacked country, sometimes quite severely.
In the case of Tunisia, tourism accounts for around 7% of the national GDP, which makes it a strategic sector of the domestic economy. After the 2015 Bardo attacks in Tunis, the drop in tourists amounted to 25,7% annually. After the Sousse attacks the same years, the economic impact was estimated to an additional 450 million euros according to Selma Elloumi Rekik, the Tunisian Minister of Tourism.
Such numbers are not exceptional, nor are they new. In 1992, when Egypt suffered a series of attacks, the drop in its tourism economy was 43%.
The impact can vary according to the type of attacks : are they large, isolated occurrences? Or are they small, repeated assaults spanning a longer period ? A study by Pizam & Fleisher (Severity versus Frequency of Acts of Terrorism: Which Has a Larger Impact on Tourism Demand?, 2002) has shown that in Israel, between 1991 and 2001, the main impact of terrorist attacks on tourist entries in the country is the frequency of the attacks, and not their level of severity. It seems harder to recover from a climate of fear and uncertainty than from isolated events. In the latter case, provided there are no subsequent attacks, tourism can grow back slowly to its previous levels in a period of 6 to 12 months.
