Worldly Wise

In 2013, two years after the Fukushima nuclear accident, Japan had a record number of foreign visitors, 9 million. After the SARS outbreak in Asia and the swine flu epidemic in Mexico, hotel occupancy rates recovered within a year. The Deloitte report shows that even major terrorist attacks don’t leave a lasting impression on travellers.

This resilience partly reflects the efforts of affected countries. When tourist numbers dwindled in Bali, Indonesia, after a series of bombings in 2005, the island used a steep devaluation of the Indonesian currency to run an advertising campaign with the slogan ‘Our loss is your gain!’

Greece might consider a similar message if it reintroduced, and promptly devalued, the drachma. In Tunisia, too, tourist flows are mainly sensitive to prices: If they are low enough, the attack will cease to be a deterrent to tourists.

The growing accessibility of travel and the increasing sophistication of the tourist industry are turning the world into a product. Going places today is less of an adventure now than it was 20, or even 10 years ago. That’s convenient, because the population of wealthier countries, which provide most of the world’s leisure travellers, is ageing.

Older travellers are less interested in adventure of the nerve-tickling kind, and they encourage the industry to make staying in one country a lot like staying in another. In many cases, travellers don’t even care what’s going on in the country they’re visiting.

When Bangkok experienced a series of coups in 2008, Thailand’s resort islands didn’t experience a drop in tourist traffic.

This kind of separation is good for economies, but I’m not sure it’s equally good for the traveller’s psyche. We bet on the industry’s ability to shelter us from harsh reality.

Yet other lands are not amusement parks. sometimes reality intrudes — from the lack of cash in teller machines to a hail of bullets on a beach.

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