Posted on : 16-05-2016 4:11

Popular Holiday Destinations Affected By Terrorism.

It’s becoming all too commonplace hearing about terror attacks, more recently in France and Belgium. However, how do terror attacks in holiday resorts affect the holiday habits of us Brits?

Recent Survey

Recently there has been a survey done by HolidayGems.co.uk which included 1,500 UK adults. The survey found that Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt topped the list of places people were NOT prepared to go visit.

There can’t be many of us who don’t understand the reasoning for that, but you have to admit that it is quite ironic as visiting a resort which has recently been attacked by terrorists is probably going to be one of the more safer places to visit. The local police and other anti-terrorism organisations will be on heightened alert, as will anybody staying there.

It’s kind of similar to when a commercial plane crashes due to a technical fault. Immediately most people say I’m not flying with that airline ever again, but you can bet your last dollar on the fact that the airline will have scrutinised the fault and completely corrected, tested and re-tested it. Making it virtually impossible for that same fault to happen again.

As the months pass after a terrorist attack people generally go back to their old travelling habits. Its not that they forget about the poor people who were horribly killed or injured, I think it’s more to do with the absolute resilience of the British people. You just have to do a search on Google for stories of Londoners enduring the blitz during the seconds word war to read about just how defiant and unmovable they were.

Chris Blackwell, a spokesperson for HolidayGems.co.uk commented: “One thing we do know for sure is that Brits’ attitudes to destinations change rapidly, and their resilience to incidents that occur is quite surprising”. He went onto say “We envisage for instance, as soon as a place like Sharm el Sheikh re-opens its doors again, holidaymakers will be queuing to get in”.

These statements are so true. Holidaymakers making their way back to previously terrorised holiday resorts is almost like nature taking over a disused building or plot of land, eventually the whole area has been taken over by nature, you just can’t stop it.

Turkey

Turkey has been targeted a lot in the past few years with car and suicide bombings, the latest being a female suicide bomber who blew herself up in Bursa near to the Grand Mosque wounding 13 people. TAK, an splinter group of the PKK militant group later claimed responsibility. A few days later two police officers who were killed and 22 people wounded by a suicide car bomb in the southeastern city of Gaziantep.

According the the Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmuş the Turkish security forces had foiled 85 terror attacks including 49 suicide bombers since January 2016.

These are quite staggering figures and to read them you would naturally think why would anybody still want to go to Turkey. Now take a look at the following graph courtesy of www.tradingeconomics.com.

The most interesting thing about this graph is the months January, February & March because we can compare last years figures to this years. So when you consider the sheer amount of terrorist attacks on this country over the past year and a bit, it’s quite astounding to see that the figures are only slightly down for these three months this year compared to last.

This graph seems to contradict the fact that we stated at the top of this post that Turkey was one of the destinations Brits were not prepared to go to on holiday. My own theory on this is that when some people answer a question in a survey they won’t give it as much thought as when they are planning a holiday. Also, prices maybe slightly cheaper this time round to entice people to go there, so somebody says “I’m not going there” in a survey then sees a great deal for Turkish holiday and thinks “yeah, why not”. Just a theory.

Even Chris Blackwell from the company who conducted the survey, HolidayGems.co.uk said this “Although it’s slow now, we have no doubt that Turkey as a solid destination that will attract Brits during the next few months as appetite comes back.”

Whichever way you look at it human resilience in very strong and refuses to be tamed.

UKACP