WRITTEN BY CH. FAISAL MAHMOOD
The years before 1914 were a time of brilliance for Tyrol. Tourism was booming. The number of visitors rose and rose and it seemed as if this growth would go on forever. The First World War brought it all to an abrupt halt.
Picturesque landscapes suddenly became front lines; thriving resorts were transformed into giant hospitals. For many hoteliers and innkeepers with establishments in the line of fire, the work of decades was ruined overnight.
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. Our Hospitality sector has already suffered a lot due to Afghan war and war on terror.
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 in sectors such as hospitality (hotels and restaurants), airlines and tour firms among others. Consequently, this has a great impact on the economy of a country.
War conflicts have been known to be highly destructive to attraction sites especially geographical terrains that constitute much of the tourist destinations in any country. 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.
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.
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. It involves shuttle diplomacy and extensive marketing so as to restore the image of the country to people from all over 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.
Very Unfortunately India and Pakistan are on the brink of a big war after the latter brought down two Indian fighter jets.Tensions have risen since a suicide car bombing in Indian-administered Kashmir killed at least 42 Indian paramilitary forces on February 14.Pakistan tourism was just picking up after a prolong war at terror. We hope that sense of ‘Peace and No War’ will prevail and war will be avoided.
