Tourism is a precious commodity. What oil was in the early 1970s, tourism is today. In those days, when we thought oil was running out, those countries that had it had power, while those that didn’t were thought to have a bleak future. For a while, the Arab countries held the whole world to ransom.
Tourism is now the biggest industry in the world. For some countries, revenues from tourism account for more than 20% of gross national product. Yet tourism is such a fragile earner.
Think back over the past two years or so and consider which countries have suffered economically because of an event which has frightened off visitors.
We had food poisoning in the Dominican Republic, hurricanes in the Caribbean, tourist murders in Egypt, earthquakes in the Azores, social unrest in Kenya, kidnappings and murders in the Yemen and Uganda, invasion threats by Turkey in Cyprus over the purchase of missiles, menacing promises of resort bombings by terrorists in Turkey, incidents in Florida and now the war in the Balkans.
This latest event has devastated tourism in Croatia and all the neighbouring countries around Serbia and, of course, is having a knock-on effect on bookings to eastern Italy, parts of the Ionian and northern Greece, where there is an area also called Macedonia which has nothing to do with the Republic of Macedonia.
So, the troubles in Turkey earlier on in the year probably pushed visitors towards Greece, Cyprus and Croatia.
However, any benefit that some areas in Greece and Croatia saw from the problems in Turkey was short-lived. Though there is no real risk in travelling to these countries, the public perception is that there is. The market is so sensitive that a few newspaper articles with sensationalised headlines are enough to destabilise a destination.
In this country, everyone turns to the poor, hapless Foreign Office for advice. In times of a tourism crisis, every word it uses is scrutinised and analysed by the press, the public, tour operators and destination tourist offices alike.
Conspiracy theories abound, with one country turning angrily on another for precipitating the collapse in the first country’s tourism.
And how on earth do you react as a country when you know that public perception is wrong? Earlier on in the year, Turkey advertised the fact that there was no security risk to visitors. This probably drew attention to the problem.
At the moment, all the eastern Mediterranean tourist offices (this was to be their year) are looking with envy at Spain and Portugal which, one assumes, are benefiting from the eastern Mediterranean’s current problems.
Public perception of risks in visiting a particular destination also vary from country to country. When the missile crisis was running in Cyprus last year, the German market was far more affected than the British market, which has closer links with the island.
As for the Americans – I’m sure they must feel personally at risk no matter where they go and their understanding of European geography and politics is even more suspect than that of the average Brit. We can only keep going and wonder where the next crisis will be.