Impacts of war conflicts in the tourism industry

Disruption of service delivery in the hotel industry

One of the greatest casualties of war conflicts is the hotel industry of a country. Hotels suffer massive losses due to cancellations of bookings and pull outs of visitors who are already staying in the hotels. The hotel industry   involves many stakeholders whose services are put at hold with the onset of war conflicts. Curio shops and other business settings that target tourists as their main customers also suffer great losses that may at times force some businesses to close down completely.

Massive unemployment

The worst thing about the impacts of war conflicts in the tourism sector is that these impacts are very extensive. As such, they cause great losses such as massive unemployment of thousands of employees who are directly or indirectly employed by the tourism sector. This includes employees is sectors such as hospitality (hotels and restaurants), airlines and tour firms among other sectors. Consequently, this has a great impact on the economy of a country as tourism contributes more than half of a country’s annual income.

Destruction of attraction sites

War conflicts have been known to be highly destructive to attraction sites especially geographical terrains that constitute much of the tourist destinations in any currently. When this occurs such a country’s tourism sector may not recover as the attraction sites are at times destroyed completely thereby leaving nothing for tourists to see. Additionally, the physical damage associated with war conflicts and   unrests is likely to offset a country’s tourism   completely. This in turn makes it hard for such a tourism sector to thrive again to its full potential.

Grounding of airline services

The most common form of transport for tourists especially in international tourism is air transport. However, in the event that there are war conflicts in a country airline services are grounded and as such the tourism sector suffers a very great blow. It may take months before normal airline operations resume thereby implying that the tourism sector losses very many tourists and at times this loss are irreversible. A case study is Egypt whereby before war conflicts started, the tourism sector contributed more than 15% of the country’s revenue. The worst part is that as of now about two years down the line, normal airline services have not resumed. As such, the country’s tourism sector has been affected severely in that it will be very hard to revive it back to its previous state.

War conflicts are very expensive

Due to the great negative effects that come about with war conflicts, the tourism sector is affected in full swing such that it becomes quite expensive to put the sector running again. This is due to the fact that in times of war, countries issue travel advisories to its citizens to avoid visiting countries with conflicts.USA is well known to issue advisories to keep off   countries troubled by war conflicts. The worst part is that relinquishing a country’s image after the issuance of such advisories is quite expensive and equally tasking. It involves shuttle diplomacy and extensive marketing so as to restore   the image of the country to people from allover the world. It is actually not possible  to fully  restore the country’s image and as such  after  the conflicts  cool down  tourism  sector  goes down  than it was before.

War conflicts are usually very tiresome and equally disruptive not only to peace but also to the normal running of operations in a country. This is best known to countries that have been through war conflicts and are trying to recover from the effects of war. These are countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Iraq and Syria among other countries. There is a new trend whereby tourists are redirecting their   preferred destinations to other countries. With such trends, it is expected to be quite hard for countries gripped by war to be able to revive their tourism sectors to fully utilize the sector’s potential for economic growth among other notable benefits to the countries.

War conflicts effects in the tourism sector cut across board whereby several sectors that are directly or indirectly related to tourism suffer great losses. In addition to this, there is massive loss of jobs as this sector accounts for nearly 30% of the total employment slots in the economy.