Post-Disaster and Post-Conflict Tourism

Toward a New Management Approach

Maximiliano E. Korstanje, Hugues Séraphin, Vanessa G. B. Gowreesunkar, Hugues Seraphin, Maximiliano Korstanje, Vanessa G.B. Gowreesunkar

• Publisher: Apple Academic Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000007268
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Post-disaster and post-conflict tourism has recently emerged as a prominent topic of research and considers new risks that jeopardize tourism travel to destinations that have recently experienced climate-related disasters, civil conflicts, and other challenges. This volume presents a host of innovative strategies that could be adopted by post-colonial, post-conflict, and post-disaster destinations to encourage travel and tourism in these areas.

Policymakers are focusing their efforts on identifying and eradicating external and/or internal risks in order to protect the tourism industry in their regions, in line with a new spirit that is clearly orientated toward mitigating risks. This capacity of adaptation suggests two important things that are at the heart of this book. On the one hand, tourism serves as a resilient mechanism that is helping destinations in their recovery strategy. On another hand, this raises ethical issues related to tourism consumption.

PART I

Tourism and Geopolitics

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The fast growth of tourism and international travels has not been satisfactory for less developed countries (LDC) and emerging destinations (Holden, 2013). In an ever-changing world, to this problem, new emergent risks such as terrorism or natural disasters threaten the tourism industry worldwide. The temperature variability, which results from climate change, is gradually paving the ways for the emergence of catastrophic natural disasters. Recently, authorities manifested their worries about the possibilities of new lethal virus outbreaks disseminate that easily and rapidly through international travel and tourism. Hence, policymakers manifest their needs of thinking about tourism beyond the classic paradigms. One of the problems of international cooperation in the context of disasters is not only the cultural differences among nations but also the lack of international jurisprudence that accelerates the cooperation and financial aid across the globe (MacCallister-Smith, 1985; Reisman, 1990; Higgns, 1995). To set a clear example, many nations have agreed on some basic consensuses to reduce greenhouse gases that generate climate change, while the US (arguing the doctrine of self-representation) rejected systematically to join or coordinate efforts to mitigate the emission of greenhouse gases (Schipper and Pelling, 2006; Keoane and Victor, 2011). In other cases, some peripheral nations are hand-tied to move material resources to evacuate their citizens before a hurricane or typhoon. Poverty, doubtless, potentiates the levels of destruction once the disaster takes the room. Some analysts claim that while the developed nations increase the number of gases to the atmosphere, underdeveloped countries will face the effects (Beck, 2010). The idea of a “green-modernity” that continues the dependency of the global South seems to be one of the themes social scientists hotly debated over the recent decade.

In a seminal book, Climate Terror: A Critical Geopolitics of Climate Change, two senior political scientists, Sanjay Chaturvedi and Timothy Doyle (2015), argue the ontological impossibility of the Copenhagen accord, which recently failed to shorten the differences between the US and the rest of the nations. What this point remind us, the specialists said, is that the preservation of the earth is subordinated to the economic maturation, as well as the gross national product (GNP) of each nation. Some economies have further margins of contamination according to their economic maturation, while others are strictly constrained in their industrial expansion. Basically, though the climate change is a major threat for mankind, no less true is that it imposed an irregular scheme of gas emission that is adjusted to the spirit of the market. In view of this, some radical voices alerted beyond the urgency of climate change that there lies a discourse of fear that disposes of a disciplinary mechanism of indoctrination for the global South.

What happens to be common to both the war on terror and the securitization/militarization of climate change is the speculative pre-emption of future threats and dangers to justify the manipulation of socio-spatial consciousness and policy intervention by the powers that be in the name of a moral economy that is heavily skewed in favor of the securing of future citizens (Chaturvedi and Doyle, 2015, p. 13).

As above cited, the authors contend that although authorities recognize the needs of implementing coordinated efforts in view of the danger of climate change, the manipulation of fear leads towards a stalemate where the interests of status quo are systematically preserved. This does not mean that climate change is fake, as some authors argue. The problem lies in the fact that there is a “rhetoric of climate change,” which dispossesses politics from its essence. Far from moving to deter gas emissions, climate change shows how the world is cut in two, the saved and the damned. While the socio-economic tensions that provoked the problems are not tackled, the capitalist societies debate between enlarging the gap between the haves and have nots, and the segregation of those territories that were devastated by new mega-disasters. To put this in other terms, Chaturvedi and Doyle acknowledge that the ideology of climate terror, which is supposedly be prone to egalitarianism, forges some conservative forces operating within the neoliberal agenda. The climate change not only is a great threat for mankind; it emulates some archetypical myths associated to the apocalypse. To some extent, one might speculate two contrasting forces collide in the theatralization of bottom days. Demonized by human greed, the market is pitted against the state, which, in the opposite direction, symbolizes the use of rationality in favor of the community. The philosophical rivalry between private and public space, Chaturvedi and Doyle added, rests on shaky foundations simply because the conceptual pillars of climate terror have been fleshed out by an old colonial right-wing morality. They compare the drama of climate change with the War on terror:

“Our central argument in this chapter is that similar to the war on terror, the so-called war on climate change invokes -through the deployment of certain metaphors – a borderless, flat global society at risk, but the practices it gives rise to be resulting in highly territorializing but invisible borders both within and across national borders. These new fences and walls (both material and discursive) are I being conceived, constructed and imposed by the minority world in anticipation of a large number of climate migrants fleeing from the majority world” (Chaturvedi and Doyle, 2015, p. 110).

Against this troublesome backdrop, today’s analysts and policymakers ponder the benefits of post-disaster tourism while other more-critical voices warn of its deficiencies. Basically, while some writers interrogate on the gaze of the other’s pain as a new morbid form of empathy (Korstanje and Olsen, 2011; Korstanje, 2016), others valorize the effects of these new types of tourism as an efficient mechanism towards communal revitalization once the disaster hit (Stone and Sharpley, 2008; Sather Wagstaff, 2016). As Tzanelli (2016) puts it, experts and pundits started to imagine, and tourism is mutating towards new forms. This particularly is neither good nor bad. As she stressed, what is important is to discuss the ever-increasing gap between sightseers and natives. To some extent, the system is failing to correct the background that leads the society to a state of emergency, while gazing situates as a valid form of entertainment that helps communities in the recovery facet. The capitalist system is constantly recycled through the articulation of (artists’) creativity, which means that disasters are the commodities to yield new, and growing tourist destinations. The cinema industry offers the possibilities of a collective awakening by the fact that an external message is ideologically implanted on consumers. Tzanelli suggests that the allegories of death are conducive to the authority of the status quo. To set an example, thousands of tourists delivered from the European colonial powers launch to peripheral nations to gaze on the situation of extreme poverty in which the natives are enmeshed. Beyond this act of empathy, visitors are never blamed by the cruelty and crimes perpetrated by their own states during the colonial rule. Doubtless, this suggests that dark consumption emulates a logic of entertainment enrooted in a new aesthetic, as Tzanelli concludes. In a seminal book, which is entitled Touring Poverty, Bianca Freire Medeiros calls the attention to the paradox of slumming and slum tourism. While poverty turns in basic commodities by those groups that were historically relegated by the productive system, no less true is that the conditions of exploitation remain (Freire Medeiros, 2014). For some reason, the theory of development has not reverted to the negative effects of colonialism, but at some point, it expanded the material asymmetries caused by the center over its periphery. As McMichael brilliantly observed, the colonial order sets the pace to the industrial form of production, as well as its ideological inconsistencies. The citizens of the oppressed colonies understood that democracy should be adopted as a path towards emancipation. Therefore, they asked the colonizers for the same treatment and egalitarian conditions the European citizens had in their metropolis. Of course, the colonial powers not only emulated the archetype of “noble savage” to domesticate the non-western “Others,” but also they showed an ambiguous discourse where they do not practice what they preach. The violent oppression the colonial nations exerted in their overseas territories was opposed to the climate of prosperity and liberty at the core of European societies. As a result of this, through the 60s decade, many riots and rebellions surfaced in the former colonies, demanding democracy as a revitalized form of government. The theory of development is discursively created once WWII ends, precisely to keep this periphery under control (McMichael, 2012). The Global North situates as a cultural (and economic) example to follow, whereas the Global South compromises to harmonize the fiscal accounts. Likewise, the modern organization of labor that legitimated the hegemony of North over South is not breached. Although this moot point will be widely addressed in the next chapters, some hints are remarked in the current chapter. In this vein, Korstanje (2012) laments that the old logic of domination introduced by the “European Paternalism” not only continues in modern anthropology but also aligned to the dominant discourses of tourism research. While the ruling elite marks the “alterity,” it avoids any mark. This seems to be the case of ethno-tourism, a term coined to denote “atypical forms of tourism” involving indigenous or non-western peoples. Since there is nothing like “white-tourism” to speak of a visit to Chicago or any American city, the act of gazing “an aboriginal reserve” needs a label to be understood by the public opinion. Cultural tourism, today, reinforces the old colonial rule where the non-western “Other” is seen as an object of curiosity and fear (Korstanje 2012).

As this troublesome backdrop, Séraphin, Ambaye, Gowreesunkar, and Bonnardel (2016) suggest that tourism is a key factor towards the development of LDCS in spite of the limitations to situate as genuine tourist destinations. Since the 1980s on, there was a worldwide recognition that tourism cannot revert the material asymmetries caused by the global capital (Crick, 1989). The efforts of policymakers to attract further tourists in zones of conflict or disasters have alerted scholars about the classic assumption of marketing and management. The negative image can be successfully re-addressed and reverted following the studies in the post-disaster literature. We can say the same about the education of visitors. The present book sheds lights on the previously-published academic background that indicates tourists can be socialized at the pre-visit stage online. From this stance, the main argument of this editorial project suggests a fresh alternative to the “precautionary principle,” which suggests risks can be detected and erased to ensure the well-functioning of the destination. To what extent some strategies are effective or not to prevent disasters should be subject to further scrutiny (Walter, 2016). Our book deals with the concerns on destination competitiveness as a fertile ground in the years to come. Visual Online Learning Materials (VOLM) helps to foster the competitiveness of emerging tourist destinations. This book highlights how marketers work hard to put in the attractive information in their VOLM model, as it is suggested by Dale Robinson Model (DRA). In so doing, our efforts are oriented at setting out the results of DRA applications in an online-platform. We hold the thesis unless the tourists are previously educated the potentiality of emerging tourist destinations is doomed to an inevitable failure. The expectative of first-world tourists not only should re-trained they should be introduced into a stage of empathy with the Other’s suffering. The highly interactive experiences related to learning about a PCCD destination in a pre-visit stage can be easily shared within an edugame community to meet the needs of tourists to set realistic expectations about the places they intend to visit.

In the discussion, place branding plays a leading role not only in the configuration of narratives, imaginative landscapes, and discourses around the tourist destination but as an efficient instrument to gain further attention in the international market. Basically, Northern Ireland was a beautiful destination over the years, though the action and violence perpetrated by terrorism affected negatively the reputation of the site. While experts and marketing-related scholars thought the destination organic image takes much time to be restored after a negative event or bad advertising, new evidence suggests that the patterns of holiday-making or tourist consumption are gradually changing. Today’s tourists are interested in visiting sites or places that have been devastated by disasters, hit by terrorism, or simply are next to its disappearance. Though as a new field of study, this morbid motivation remains unexplored by policymakers and scholars, much attention was received by the side of public opinion and journalism. In fact, a Netflix documentary series known as “The Dark Tourist” narrates the experiences, emotions, and expectances of the journalist David Farrier. In eight episodes, Farrier shows not only how “dark tourism” is a widely extended practice across the globe, no matter the culture, but the innermost feelings rechanneled by these types of experiences. From the cruel Pablo Escobar in Colombia towards Phnom Penh in Cambodia, what is the common-thread argument seems to be the needs of experiencing the “Other’s pain” to interpret their own life.

As discussed, this book is also investigating how destinations are using heritage and history in their branding strategy. More specifically, the book is investigating how post-colonialism is used in branding strategy. Exploratory in nature, the study concludes that post-colonial destinations (and non-post-colonial destinations) are going most of the time for neutrality in terms of branding strategy (logo design), which is at the moment a mainstream strategy worldwide. It also appears that destination marketers pay more attention to how the destination perceives itself than to how the destination is perceived by outsiders. On this basis, DMO marketers are suggested to adopt an ambidextrous marketing strategy, which boosts the marketability of a destination in crisis. A French overseas territory, which was historically occupied by France, failed to capitalize on tourism as other study-cases. To understand this better, we devote our attention on the “le Tour de Yoles de la Martinique,” a traditional boat race around Martinique. The empirical evidence suggests that in order to re-position ‘Le tour des Yoles de la Martinique’ into a major tourism event, the Martinique DMO needs to provide support directed towards the training of event managers and sponsorship and media strategies need to be devised.

We deal with the promising role of tourism in post-disaster contexts, which revitalizes not only the losses but under some conditions, it accelerated the timeframe in the recovery facet. Although some scholars emphasized on tourism as a resilient activity, which recovers to serious each society develops. This chapter in-depth examines the specialized literature, as well as the ontological impossibilities of experts to forecast the future. In fact, the future should be understood as a hypothetical construction which does not take a room in the present, at the least as it was originally imagined. The limitations of the precautionary principle, jointly to risk perception theory, to anticipate disa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• About the Editors
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Abbreviations
• Preface
• Epilogue
• Part I: Tourism and Geopolitics
• Part II: Post-Colonial, Conflict, and Disaster Destinations
• Part III: Consumption in Post-Colonial and Conflict Destination
• Part IV: A Commoditized World
• Conclusion
• Color insert of illustrations
• Index