BootsnAll Travel Community

Do you find that negative news stories ever make you think twice about visiting a place? I don’t mean “war has broken out” or “it’s all two feet under water”, where it probably is sensible to steer clear for a while. I was specifically thinking about the student who was murdered on Koh Samui at New Year, although it could apply to any similar story. Despite the fact that I’m used to living in cities where god-only-knows how many murders/rapes/muggings/attacks happen every year, when I heard about that a few weeks before I was due to head off to Thailand my immediate thought was “Ooooh, I’d better avoid that island, clearly going there is tantamount to a death sentence.” I’d like to clarify (before everyone leaps on me for being a hysteric) that two seconds later, I thought “Don’t be so bloody stupid, of course you can go there if you want, it could have happened anywhere and thousands of people go there quite happily and safely every year,” but I still had the original first thought. Do you find that you tend to have the same “eeeek” response to news stories that occur in places where you’re planning on visiting, when you’d shrug them off much more easily if the same story featured your home city?

I wonder how much of an effect this sort of story actually has on a place’s tourist industry (not necessarily with “proper” travelling but perhaps more with people who just book a fortnight’s break somewhere sunny) – I’d be intrigued to know if Koh Samui suffers a drop after this if people start thinking of it as Murder Island, and choose somewhere else, or whether people just forget about it after a few months and don’t give it a thought when booking trips.

Interesting topic, and I'm going to cheat slightly and extend it to natural disasters as well. I remember how empty Istanbul was of tourists for the whole year after the earthquake of August 1999 (which I was in, incidentally - but that's another story). The point is earthquakes can happen any time - like murders - in seismic areas of the world, and people will stay away for months if not years after they have happened, and then they forget, go back, and tourism/travelling carries on as normal in these places. It's true that sesimic activity tends to extend to after shocks and even more earth tremors, but to see the empty planes a year after it has happened is indicative of the fear that events such as these put into many tourist/travellers.
Greece suffered a major drop in tourism during the First Gulf War, simply because Greece was close enough geographically to Iraq (close? How many thousand miles is it from Greece to Iraq??) and because of the fear of terrorism. I'd be most interested statistically whether London has suffered a major drop in tourism because of the bombs last year (they didn't so much during the height of the IRA campaigns, as far as I can remember).
I remember at summer school one year there was a major drop in Italian students/ Russian students visiting England for their courses because of the Foot and Mouth disease/ Mad Cow scandals. Were they worried perhaps that their MacDonalds were infected?
I have no doubt that Tsunamis aren't much help to tourism either. As for murders, well, you put it perfectly.

Toronto definetly suffered huge losses following the SARS scare. I don't think their tourism industry has fully recovered yet.

I'm concerned about the whole avian flu thing and people staying away as a result of it (but hey, maybe it'll work in my favour as I head off to Eastern Europe!)

I guess I don't pay that close attention to singular incidents (like a kidnapping, or murder). I skim headlines, and pay closer attention to things like natural disasters and bombings and things. First instinct? "What the hell am I thinking going there!" (especially Syria, which has been suffering a lot of bad press recently from the bombings in Lebanon, and detentions of Canadian citizens alleged to have ties with al Qaeda).


Funny story from a Lebanese girl at the restaurant yesterday:
she tells us Syria is this horrible place, that we shouldn't go there, it's not safe, etc. (obviously her background lends to a slight bias)
She says go to Lebanon instead, way cooler, much safer (despite random car bombs (well, maybe not so random, but still more car bombs than in Syria))
then she tells of her Lebanese friend who went to Cairo and was followed and gawked at and treated rudely (because she was wearing a tank top and mini-skirt which is perfectly acceptable in Beirut)

Moral - keep your head down, your nose clean, try to stick to the cultural norms, and you should be fine. At least that's what I tell myself everytime I freak out that I'm going to a really scary dangerous place