Tourism and Conflict

Abstract

The tourism industry or sector is an important source of economic activity worldwide. The tourism industry plays a major role in providing huge employment opportunities directly. And at the same time, it also provides other employment avenues indirectly by supporting allied sectors or industry. The tourism industry continues to be one of the rapidly growing as well as one of the largest industrial sectors worldwide. The growth rate in tourism sector has been showing consistent increase annually and is expected to follow the same pattern in the future. The detailed report presented by UNWTO (2015) has revealed that tourism has turned out to be one of the “key drivers for socio–economic progress” [1]. The contribution that tourism activity makes to State economies and to the global economy as a whole is immense. The safety and security of tourists is important for any tourist industry because incidents of crime, disasters or terrorism negatively impacts tourist destinations. Thus, it poses various challenges to tourism industry especially in the era of vast media outreach. Unlike other factors, terrorism or political unrest can have major and consistent impact on tourism. Tourism is not just important for economic development but can serve as a tool for peace building. We will look at various measures in this paper such as improving destination image by managing perception of potential tourists. This can be managed by various methods such as through use of social media and conducting various sports events, national and international tourism conferences, extending discounts and offers, reducing security presence in tourist areas and developing various other unexplored areas which are less influenced by the conflict.