Global tourism response to crises

http://tinyurl.com/p6wby (swissinfo.org)

A short but interesting article about the recent annual meeting of the International Association of Scientific Experts in Tourism (AIEST) at Pontresina, Switzerland. It cites the two most notorious attacks in Egypt as indicators, amongst others, that atrocities are having less impact on tourist behaviour than previously: "Swiss professor Thomas Bieger of St Gallen University said travellers were becoming immune to such shocks. There was only a slight drop in bookings for Sharm el-Sheik after the attack on the seaside resort earlier this year, but it took the Egyptian tourist industry 12 months to fully recover from the 1997 massacre of tourists, including more than 30 Swiss, in Luxor. Statistics published by the World Tourism Organization show that people in the industrialised world and increasingly in emerging markets like India are quite simply no longer willing to forego their holidays abroad."

The annual meeting of the AIEST takes place as Turkey recovers from its own tragic experience of terrorist targetting of tourism:

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/68998-print.shtml