TERROR IN PARADISE
AFTER A WEEK THAT SAW DEADLY BOMB ATTACKS ON HOLIDAY RESORTS IN THAILAND, FOREIGN EDITOR DAVID PRATT ASSESSES THE IMPACT OF TERRORISM ON GLOBAL TOURISM
IT WAS a holiday weekend, a bumper time for the country’s tourism industry as locals joined foreigners at seaside resorts to celebrate the Queen’s birthday, which is also Mother’s Day in Thailand. Then, less than 12 hours apart, the resort of Hua Hin was rocked by four bombs that killed three people and wounded 24 others.
Other blasts followed, striking the island of Phuket, a world-famous resort town, and Surat Thani, the jumping-off point for travellers heading to the white sandy beaches of Gulf of Thailand islands such as Koh Samui.
So far, the Thai authorities have not revealed who they believe were behind the attacks, which targeted popular tourist sites almost exactly a year after 20 people were killed at the Erawan shrine in Bangkok.
Even though suspicion falls on insurgents from Muslim-majority provinces in southern Thailand, the same authorities have been keen to play down a terrorist motive.
It’s a move many say is nothing more than an effort to lessen the impact on Thailand’s economic lifeline – tourism.
“It’s bad for the economy, which is limping along on one leg, and now we have these incidents,” said Ittirit Kinglek, the president of the Tourism Council of Thailand.
His views echo those of many local Thai business people, who know full well the effect the attacks will have on trade.
Deadly as they were, the latest bomb attacks in Thailand were fairly small and crude devices compared to those used in recent terrorist strikes elsewhere in the world.
The bombs were most likely aimed at sending out a clear message, one that only further adds to the woes of a massive global tourism industry reeling from the effects of transnational terror.
From Turkey to Tunisia, Nice to Cairo, terrorists, be they homegrown or international, know exactly what the impact of their deadly trade will be on tourist economies.
With publicity the oxygen that fuels the fire of terrorist organisations, murdering innocent visitors on holiday, the softest of targets, is a brutally effective short-term strategy. For terrorists, tourist are easy targets. Holidaymakers’ behaviour and their routes are easily predictable. As potential victims they are often unsuspecting, sometimes naive and unprotected.
Attacking tourists also guarantees acres of media coverage in the home countries of the victims, as well as in the destination where the attack took place.
Like al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations before them, Isis especially is now specifically targeting tourists and their destinations to achieve their objectives.
As the territorial caliphate of Isis in the Middle East shrinks and they find themselves militarily on the back foot, increasingly the group is switching to acts of transnational terrorism.
Sowing fear, hatred and division is one objective, but damaging economies and building political pressure inside countries is another.
In Belgium, where Isis attackers bombed the Brussels airport and subway in March, killing 32 people, the economy has already suffered nearly €1 billion (£863bn) in losses from business and tax revenue.
The biggest hits were to hotels, restaurants and tourism. Concerts, carnivals and sporting events were cancelled, sapping revenue from the entertainment industry.
“Insecurity hinders tourism development and the lack of tourism development generates widespread insecurity through its economic pressures,” says Dr Yeganeh Morakabati, an analyst at Bournemouth University, who specialises in risk perception, terrorism and political conflict.
Morakabati points out that such a downward economic spiral in some societies often increases discontent, diminishes hope, generates resentment and creates an environment ripe for the recruitment of disenfranchised youth into militant groups.
This is especially the case in many developing countries heavily dependent on international tourism.
“Tourism is the only economic sector where developing countries consistently run a trade surplus,” says Lisa Mastny, a staff researcher at the Worldwatch Institute, who writes on developmental issues.
“It’s especially significant in poorer countries that have few other options and for the world’s 49 so-called least developed countries, tourism is the second-largest source of foreign exchange after oil.”
This symbiotic link between terrorism and tourism became globally apparent in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the US in 2001.
Before that attack, travel and tourism was the world’s largest industry, accounting for one in every 12 jobs.
But when this massive $3.6 trillion (£2.8trn) industry went into decline after the al-Qaeda attacks, the knock-on effect extended well beyond the US, exposing the vulnerability of many countries in the developing world where lives are often devastated by derailed economies.
Security analysts point to the unpalatable but unavoidable fact that terrorism is very cost-effective when directed in this way.
Take, for example, the attacks on nightclubs in 2002, by the al-Qaeda offshoot Jemaah Islamiah on the Indonesian Island of Bali.
For a mere $74,000 (£57,200) the terrorists effectively mounted an operation that killed 202 people and temporarily ruined the tourist industry in Bali.
More recently, Isis spent less than $10,000 (£7,700) to finance the Paris attacks in 2015. The cost to the French economy has been enormous. Tourism is one of the largest of its sectors, accounting for seven per cent of