conflict tourism example

Tourism Review

Accueil Numéros 15 Varia Post-conflict tourist landscapes:...

Post-conflict tourist landscapes: between the heritage of conflict and the hybridization of tourism activity

The upheavals caused by armed conflicts introduce profound changes in the tourism landscape. Physical, social or moral upheavals recompose the existing heritage and lead to its reinterpretation, they also create new heritage generated by the conflict itself. Post-conflict tourism is then in a situation of hybridization, between tourist practices detached from the events of the war (cultural tourism, seaside, etc.), and other practices that are intimately linked to these events (memory tourism, dark tourism, etc.). In this paper, we retrace the dynamics of this post-conflict "tourism resilience," through the observation of two examples in Bosnia and Herzegovina: the cities of Sarajevo and Mostar. We explore the urban and tourist landscape of these two cities in order to identify the different forms of tourism, memorialization or heritagization practices, related to the legacy of the Bosnian war (1992-1995).

Entrées d’index

Keywords :, texte intégral, introduction.

• 1 Initially a physical concept indicating "the ability of an object to recover its initial state afte (...)
• 2 The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina began in April 1992 amidst inter-community tensions exacerba (...)

1 This paper, based on a field study in Bosnia and Herzegovina, provides an overview of the resilience 1 process in a post-conflict tourism landscape. It aims to analyze the different forms of adaptation of tourism to the post-conflict context and the heritagization and memorialization approaches related to the Bosnian war (1992-1995) 2 . The study includes a comparison between two cities: Mostar, the main city in the south of the country, and Sarajevo the capital. We will analyze the influence of the political, social and ethnic contexts, which differ from one city to the other, in the approach taken to place the memory of the conflict in heritage and / or tourism.

2 As the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B-H) ended in late 1995, our study is now taking place in a "cooling" terrain after two decades of peace in the country. This peace is often described in B-H as being "negative", characterized by the mere absence of armed conflict and not by true reconciliation between the different communities (Clark, 2009). In a context where the social dynamics are still tense, tourism can contribute to the construction of peace (Alluri 2009, Becken and Carmignani 2016, Causevic and Lynch 2011, Jafari 1989, Upadhayaya 2013), or it could, conversely, hinder the rebuilding of cohesion between the different communities of the country (Farmaki 2017, p 533, Poria and Ashworth 2009, Webster and Timothy 2006). It depends on the social, cultural and political factors related to the peculiarities of the region and expressed by the emotional relationship to the memory of the conflict and the traces it has left in the landscape. In this article, we try to situate the places studied in an emotional chart ranging from "hot" to "cold", which could eventually create a grid for understanding the interpretation of heritages and memories of the traumatic events.

I. Memory of the Conflict - Methods of Observation

3 During our field trip to Mostar and Sarajevo in 2016, we conducted our observations by immersion in the urban and peri-urban areas that are the target of tourist visits related to the conflict. This immersion allowed us to conduct independent observations of the urban landscape (especially the historic centers) and the attitudes of tourists and locals towards the memories and traces of the conflict (whether heritagized or not). On the other hand, it made it possible to analyze the discourse adopted by local tourism stakeholders in the context of ordinary tourist services and in the various heritage mediation tools offered to visitors.

4 A more specialized conversation, collected through semi-structured interviews (five interviews in Sarajevo and four in Mostar) with local tourist stakeholders (agents and managers of tourist offices and museums, guides, managers of service establishments) allowed us to complete the analysis and to clarify some gray areas that still existed.

• 3 Translated into French by the terms "dark", "black", "obscure" or "macabre" tourism, semantic analy (...)
• 4 Tourism to places "with which one maintains a strong personal biographical relationship, (...), tho (...)

5 Visiting "places of proven, alledged or imagined family origins" (Bachimon and Dérioz, 2010)

5 In the scope of reading mobilized for this study, the forms of tourism which appear generally after the armed conflicts will be summoned as indicators of the changes induced by the war. In particular, dark tourism 3 , that refers to visiting sites related to death, disasters or human suffering (Lennon and Foley 2000, 3). This concept, born in the mid-1990s, can in some cases lead to confusion because it shares the same terrain with other forms of tourism, such as memory tourism 4 . The latter has a personal dimension that differentiates it from dark tourism, and makes it a kind of "post-traumatic affinity tourism 5 ".

6 The other important factor we observe is heritage. In a post-conflict context, we distinguish two broad categories: the pre-existing heritage already constituted before the conflict, and the heritage created by the conflict. We thus differentiate the "preserved" or "rehabilitated" heritage (former heritage spared or little degraded by the conflict), the "new" heritage (resulting from the conflict) and the "hybrid" heritage (ancient heritage whose symbolic value was modified by the conflict) (Kassouha 2018, pp. 184-189).

II. Similarities and contrasts

7 The urban landscape of the two cities has many similarities, with features more or less accentuated from one place to another. We have to highlight in both cases the omnipresence of traces of conflict in the urban landscape. We often find facades of buildings still showing the damage of conflict, left as they are, partially restored or had simply their holes plugged. The other striking element is the discontinuity of the urban landscape (Levy 2005), the contrast between the modern and the old, between new or renovated buildings and damaged or destroyed buildings, which rub shoulders and mix frequently (Figure 1).

8 In both cities, the historic center, a central tourist area, has been restored, although traces of the conflict still remain. There are private exhibitions offered to tourists, they feature photos of the conflict and its key events (the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica massacre, the destruction of the Old Bridge of Mostar, etc.).

Figure 1 : Examples of discontinuous cityscape in Sarajevo (A) and in Mostar (B).

KASSOUHA, Z. 2016

• 6 This is the most frequently sold product to tourists according to a souvenir shop manager of the hi (...)

9 The souvenir shops of both historic centers also contribute to the presence of conflict in the landscape. On their shelves, war-related products are often offered, such as bullet casings turned into pens 6 or other by-products.

10 But beyond these similarities, the two cities also represent significant contrasts, related to the history and socio-political dynamics of each city. It is these differences that interest us the most because they reveal key elements for understanding post-conflict tourism developments in the field.

III. Sarajevo, memorialization and balancing

• 7 These are impacts of shells on the ground that have been filled with a red resin, giving them a flo (...)

11 Commemorative procedures (offered for tourism or otherwise) are frequent in Sarajevo. Memorials to the dead honoring the victims mark out the urban space. The monument to the memory of children who died during the siege of the city is particularly noteworthy. It is composed of a central fountain with a glass sculpture and on the side metal cylinders on which the names of the children are engraved. To say nothing of the "Roses of Sarajevo" 7 scattered on the ground throughout in the city.

12 The other aspect that is very present in Sarajevo is that of its past as an Olympic city. It had hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1984. The superimposition of these two events marks a deep bifurcation in the history of Sarajevo, which in less than a decade changed its status from "Olympic city" to " martyred city " (Naef, 2016) (Figure 2).

Figure 2: At the crossroads of the Olympic past and the memory of the war in Sarajevo.

Former sports ground of the Olympic Games transformed into an improvised cemetery during the conflict; it became nowadays the Cemetery of the Martyrs. The graves of the victims rub shoulders in the shadow of the column of the Olympic flame.

KASSOUHA 2016

13 From the point of view of "conventional" tourism, the city benefits from the attractiveness of its Ottoman-style historic center and its many museums (Naef 2014, pp. 289-291). A dynamic and festive atmosphere reigns over the city-center as a whole. Many cafes, bars and restaurants in this part of Sarajevo attract a young, local clientele. The majority of hotels and hostels, popular with young international tourists, are also there.

Map 1: Location of conflict memory sites visited during fieldwork in Sarajevo.

Graphic: KASSOUHA 2016, Map: © OpenStreetMap Contributors

A. Memorialization and urban dark tourism 

• 8 Main artery of Sarajevo very regularly targeted by snipers during the siege of the city killing and (...)

14 The forms of memorialization and the traces of destruction called up make Sarajevo a Mecca for dark tourism. On Sniper Alley 8 (Map 1) the facades of many residential buildings are riddled with bullets or damaged by shell fire.

15 On the other hand, the great diversity of places of worship have mostly been renovated, whether mosques, churches (Catholic or Orthodox) or synagogues. These places contribute to the image conveyed by Sarajevo as enjoying a high quality of communal life, or the "Jerusalem of the Balkans" (Naef 2014, pp. 289-290).

16 As part of our analysis, two places offering interpretations of the history of the conflict in Sarajevo draw our attention:

The B-H History Museum, and the memory of everyday life

• 9 The armed Communist movement of resistance to Nazism, led by Marshal Tito during the Second World W (...)
• 10 Since the end of the conflict, B-H governance has been divided into several administrative levels. (...)

17 The museum (Map 1, point 2) contains permanent exhibitions on life in the Yugoslav era, and the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian war and its subsequent reconstruction. References to the Yugoslav era are frequent because the museum was initially dedicated to the "Partisans" 9 . In the "multi-layered administration of B-H" 10 , the museum is managed at the state level, unlike other similar institutions attached to a more dynamic local authority (the municipality or canton).

18 The museum’s iconic permanent exhibition "Sarajevo under Siege" (Figure 3) provides an interesting framework for studying the interpretation of the memory of conflict. It represents a description of the daily life of the people of Sarajevo during the years of siege that the city endured. This daily life is shown in several aspects: household objects, the "improvisations" to survive (to keep warm, to provide transport without fuel, to get supplies, to treat the wounded), and even to be entertained through cultural events that were organized during the siege.

• 11 These two massacres resulted in dozens of deaths and were triggers for NATO's military intervention (...)
• 12 « With this exhibition, we have tried to avoid giving final judgments, ideological opinions and qua (...)

19 Some objects represent, contrariwise, the "non-survival" of the inhabitants. This includes fragments of mortar shells, personal belongings found on victims of bombing and items and press clippings related to the two " Markale " market massacres that took place in 1994 and 1995 11 . At the entrance, a sign warns visitors of the emotional shocks that exposure could create. The mediating interpretation in this exhibition is represented as "neutral" and limited to the description of the facts without providing any moral judgment 12 . Any speech that could evoke the responsibility of a particular community in the siege of the city and the suffering inflicted on the inhabitants has been carefully avoided

20 The other aspect that the exhibition tries to convey is that of the "witnessing" brought along by the inhabitants themselves. It includes a participatory dimension that allows residents to contribute by bringing personal items from the period of the siege and recounting their memories of that time. The exhibition, therefore, is a collection of objects and testimonies of the "micro-history" (Revel 1996) that helps to grasp the situation in Sarajevo during the siege.

21 The exhibition is therefore an interface of memorialization, contextualization and testimony, aimed at explaining the facts, as much to foreign tourists as to the many school groups who visit it.

Figure 3: The permanent exhibition dedicated to the conflict, "Sarajevo under Siege" at the B-H History Museum in Sarajevo

Tunnel of Hope, the sweetened memory

• 13 Constructed in the greatest secrecy in 1993, the tunnel extended nearly 800 metres underneath the t (...)
• 14 Agence France-Presse, "The Sarajevo War Tunnel Survives as a Museum", New York Times, 1 February 20 (...)

22 The Sarajevo Tunnel Museum, Tunel spasa (Bosnian Serbian-Croatian Tunnel of Salvation), known to tourists as the Tunnel of Hope (Figure 4), is located at the south-west end of the city (Map 1, point 4). This tunnel served to supply Sarajevo during the siege 13 and was the only (relatively) protected passage to the rest of the territory controlled by the Bosniak and Croat forces. After the end of the conflict, having lost its utility, most of the tunnel collapsed. There remains only the part which constitutes the south exit, leading to a private house. The family who owned the house turned the place into a museum after the war 14 . The canton of Sarajevo took possession of it in 2012 as part of a future project to rebuild the entire tunnel and open it to tourists (Naef 2016, pp. 187-194).

23 On the spot everything is done to enhance, even to reconstitute, the traces of the conflict. The venues offer a mix of memorialization work and staging. The context of the siege is presented through maps and explanatory photos. Objects, especially for military use, are on display as well as re-enactments that recreate with mannequins the process of transporting arms and food, evacuating the wounded, etc. The visitor can take the small preserved portion of the tunnel that stretches for twenty meters before joining one of the screening rooms that broadcast a loop documentary on the siege of the city. A souvenir shop and a reconstruction of a "minefield" are installed in the courtyard.

Figure 4: Sarajevo Tunnel Museum, with the portion of the tunnel that tourists can use during the visit.

25 By its layout, the museum reproduces a recurring phenomenon in the places of memory, where the balance between the conservation of the site and its adaptation to the tourist visits turns out to be delicate. According to Dominique Chevalier and Isabelle Lefort, in "places of painful memory" , the "process of beautification, by embellishment but especially perhaps by scheduling, builds both the very possibility of the visit and its denaturation" (2016). Thus, the staging of transport in the tunnel and the minefield, installed next to the "real" tunnel, play two opposite roles. On the one hand, they provide a visual testimony of the situation at the time of the conflict. And on the other hand, by their "artificial" aspect they add a "quasi-playful" dimension which attenuates the emotion engendered by the memory of the sufferings endured during the siege, making the site "less dark" (Stone 2006).

• 15 More than 100,000 visitors every year, according to the museum brochure collected from the tourist (...)

26 The museum is now the most visited tourist site in Sarajevo (Naef 2016, p.187) 15 . It is managed by the " Memorijala Fund " (Memory Fund) of the Sarajevo Canton and dedicated to the memory of the victims of the war.

27 On the other hand, the speech used on site is much less consensual than the one adopted at the Museum of History. In the explanatory panels we find references to the responsibility of the "Serbian forces" or the "Army of Republika Srpska" (in addition to the JNA) in the siege that aimed to create "Greater Serbia".

• 16 Alic, Anes, « Saving Sarajevo’s Lifeline », Time, 19 March 2002, http://content.time.com/time/magaz (...)
• 17 Burns, John F., « A Crude 1,000-Yard Tunnel Is Sarajevo’s Secret Lifeline », The New York Times, 15 (...)

28 The museum now offers an "idealized" version of the tunnel’s history, highlighting only the "undeniable" positive impact it generated during the siege. On the other hand, the negative aspects have been completely concealed, such as the black market which multiplied by ten the prices of goods passed through the tunnel 16 or the exorbitant fees for passage that people were charged 17 . The partiality of this story even annoys some guides and tourism professionals in Sarajevo (Naef 2014, 265).

29 The "Hope" label of this museum is therefore used as an element of communication to soften the interpretation of the place presented to tourists.

IV. Mostar, a conflictual memory

30 In Mostar, for the majority of tourists coming to see the historic center, including the Old Bridge "Stari Most" (Map 2), symbol of the city, the conflict seems to belong to the past and its traces are limited to a few fallow buildings, and to bullet and shrapnel marks on certain facades. Yet the tension of the conflict is still prevalent today. The city is still split in two and, despite the reconstruction of the bridge, the link between the Croatian and Bosnian communities remains almost broken.

31 As such, we have not noticed any official memorialization work in Mostar. In the historic center and adjacent neighborhoods are several small cemeteries improvised during the conflict to bury the victims, but they are not part of an official memorialization process, unlike the Sarajevo cemetery.

32 A simple inscription "Do not forget" is visible on two stones, affixed on each side of the Stari Most. Residents would have posted them without the official help of the municipality, to remind visitors of the tragic destruction of the bridge during the conflict.

• 18 After their alliance in 1992 to repel the offensive of the Serbian forces, the Bosnian and Croatian (...)

33 This lack of an official approach to memorialization and tourism heritage of the conflict in Mostar is a direct result of the community tension in the city that goes back to the conflict 18 . The memorialization thus remains on the side of private initiatives, and still constitutes a source of discord or even conflict between Bosnians and Croats.

34 On the other hand, the historical center (with the Stari Most), which dates back mainly to the Ottoman era, is located in the Bosniak part of the city. This community sees itself as a "guarantor" of this heritage. The fact that the opposing side during the conflict (the "other" part of the city) participated in the destruction of this cultural heritage, reinforces the Bosniaks’ attachment to these places, as "guardians of the temple".

35 With the boom in tourism in Mostar, it is the Bosniak side that benefits more. But despite this advantage of tourism on the Bosniak side, the Croatian side remains more prosperous with more capital and a more dynamic economic activity.

• 19 Comments collected during the interview of a supervisor of the Mostar Tourist Info Centre on 04/07/ (...)
• 20 A Croatian village of B-H where the Virgin Mary would have begun to appear in 1981 to several young (...)

36 As for the visiting tourists’ activity in the city, it is mainly composed of excursionists 19 . Coming from Croatia, especially from Dubrovnik, or from other parts of B-H, they stop in Mostar during the day. The city also benefits from the flow of Catholic pilgrims who visit the village of Medjugorje 20 located about thirty kilometers away.

MAP 2: Location of the various places studied in Mostar.

Some are linked to the memory of the conflict, others to the tourist offer in the city or to persistent tensions between the Bosniak and Croatian communities.

• 21 Backpackers are one of the main segments of the tourism market in B-H in general (Causevic, 2008, p (...)

37 In parallel, Mostar attracts another category of tourists: the young backpackers 21 , mostly Western (Causevic 2008, p.302) who are making the "tour of the Balkans" (Nelson, 2015) and stop in town for a day or two. They are certainly drawn to the historic center and the bridge, but it is also the story of the conflict that interests them. This is the main clientele of dark tourism in Mostar.

A. Dark tourism « off the beaten track »

• 22 Le Petit Futé, « BANQUE DE VERRE (STAKLENA BANKA) - MOSTAR », petitfute.com, 2017, https:// www.peti (...)

38 The epicenter of this dark tourism is located a few dozen meters west of Stari Most , along the Bulevar (Map 2) where you can see the traces of conflict at the old front line. It is an example of urban tourism "off the beaten tracks" (Gravari-Barbas and Delaplace, 2015) while remaining dark tourism. The highlight of this tourism is the Glass Bank (known by tourists as the most sensational "Sniper Tower") (Figure 5). This disused building, a dozen floors high, dominates the area and is a landmark for street-art enthusiasts. It is a bank that during the conflict served as a site for snipers for both the Serbian and Croatian forces 22 .

• 23 « The Sniper Tower in Mostar », Kanannie, 29 October 2013, http://kanannie.com/2013/10/29/the-snipe (...)

39 Even though the building is easily accessible from the street, a visit to the upper floors is not recommended because of the multiple risks: the stairs and old elevator shafts are not equipped with guardrails, explosions have left holes on the ground that can cause a fall of several meters, the floor is littered with debris and shards of glass and the basement is permanently flooded. In addition, the building is a favoured location for drug addicts 23 . For these reasons tourists who venture to climb to the top do so in small groups, or accompanied by local guides.

Figure 5: The "Glass Bank" (Sniper Tower) in Mostar, external appearance (A) and entrance hall decorated with graffiti and street art (B).

40 The absence of mediation in this type of site reinforces the tourists’ search for authenticity, to discover unknown faces of the place, without touristic "staging" (MacCannell 1973, 597). The "wasteland" aspect of the destroyed or damaged building, left as it is since the end of the conflict, fuels this perception of authenticity. The space, by its symbolism and its status as a former home of danger, gives visitors "a cold retrospective thrill" (Bachimon 2013, 75).

B. Memorialization and community tension

• 24 HVO (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane) Croatian Defense Council, the main military force of Bosnian Croats du (...)
• 25 ARBiH ( Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine ) Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during (...)
• 26 AFP, « Explosion à Mostar sur fond de tensions accrues », 20 Minutes, 14 January 2013, http://www.2 (...)

41 In the absence of a unifying memorial process in Mostar, community-based initiatives have been carried out by partisan actors which led to renewed tensions. In 2012, a Croatian veterans association set up a war memorial next to the City Hall (Map 2, point 2) in honor of HVO 24 members (Croats) who died during the conflict. A month later an association of veterans of the Bosnian army responded by installing another memorial a few meters away in honor of the combatants of the ARBiH 25 (Bosniaks) who died in combat. The tension created by these two memorial actions almost degenerated into conflict a few months later when the monument to ARBiH was partially destroyed by an explosive device 26 . The incident ended up being contained and the two monuments remained in place, one intact, the other disfigured (Figure 6).

Figure 6: The war memorial of ARBiH (Bosniak fighters) in Mostar, partially destroyed by an explosive device in January 2013 and left as is since.

V. Feedback on the field observations

43 The shift in memorialization noticed between Sarajevo and Mostar is in part the result of ethnic cleansing during the conflict, and subsequent policies by the partisan and nationalist forces of the three major politico-ethnic communities (Robin-Hunter, 2005). In territories that have become more "homogenous", intercommunity tension is lower, which makes the work of memorialization and interpretation easier.

• 27 Clements, Max, « Sarajevo: a cosmopolitan capital in an ethnically cleansed state ». The Independen (...)

44 Sarajevo lost the majority of its Serbian population: 10,500 people in the last census of the population in 2013, against 92,000 before the conflict 27 . Thus, the local authorities of the canton, which mainly represent a Bosniak population, assimilate the position of "victim" during the siege of the city to this single community. Hence the Tunnel Museum’s statement about the responsibility of the Serbian troops for the sufferings of the inhabitants. However the state-run B-H History Museum (which represents the three communities) avoids the question of responsibilities.

45 In Mostar the situation is more complex. Massive damage (including the destruction of Stari Most) occurred during the second phase of the conflict in 1993-94 when Croats and Bosniaks clashed. However, it is the members of these two same communities who share the city today, which makes any interpretation or memorialization particularly delicate.

• 28 Mulongo, Freddy, « Sarajevo: La ville s’est reconstruite à tour de bras, mais les habitants ne peuv (...)

46 Nevertheless, memorial tensions are not peculiar to Mostar, for even the memorialization that seems consensual in Sarajevo can also be controversial. The monument for the child victims of the siege, mentioned previously, caused some commotion: only the names of the Bosniak children were inscribed on it, those of the other child victims, in particular the Serbs, do not appear 28 .

47 This fragility leaves the field free to the commercial appropriation of memory by the private actors. The exhibitions located in the tourist areas of the two cities, as well as the sale of souvenirs related to the war, make us question the approach taken by these private actors vis-à-vis the memory of the conflict. The location of the exhibits and their signs posted only in English, indicate their purely touristic usefulness, relegating the actual memory to the background (Figure 7). This commodification, whose ethical aspects are debatable (Chevalier and Lefort 2016, Sharpley 2009, Wight 2009), can lead to a vicious cycle of tension fueled by economic interests. It can also perpetuate the "dramatized" image (Baudrillard 1970: 31) of a destination still "under tension".

Figure 7: "Exhibited" memory.

Private exhibitions for tourists in Sarajevo (A) and Mostar (B, C) focus on the theme of the Bosnian war and the massacres that took place there.

48 The following table summarizes the different points of similarity or divergence between Sarajevo and Mostar with regard to the memorialization, heritagization and tourism of places related to the conflict.

Table 1: Summary table of comparison in Sarajevo and Mostar with regard to the memorialization and heritagization of the conflict, as well as tourism in the post-conflict urban landscape

• 29 Notion originally evoked by several specialists in architecture and urban planning from the former (...)

VI. Resilience or adaptation?

49 The examples we have mobilized demonstrate some of the changes caused by the conflict in the tourist landscape of Mostar and Sarajevo. Could we identify these changes as forms of resilience? Or is it just the adaptation of tourism (Gravari-Barbas 2019) to post-conflict circumstances? The appropriation of the different scientific disciplines, human and applied, of the notion of resilience, has given rise to a "nebula of concepts" surrounding the definition and different uses of the term according to the domain (Quenault 2013). In our case, the field observation approach that we adopted corresponds to a "reactive" approach to resilience, focusing on "the ability of individuals and territories to recover from a catastrophic event" (Bouisset et al. 2018).

50 From this point of view, the examples observed on our two terrains can be identified as forms of resilience, despite the differences noted in the ways of approaching the conflict and integrating it (or not) into the touristic presentations.

• 30 Patrick Naef offers an in-depth analysis of several examples of guided tours dedicated to the Bosni (...)

51 Nevertheless, the case of Sarajevo seems to be simpler to pin down. Christina Aschan-Leygonie reminds us that resilience implies that the system maintains its structure not "by returning to the same state as before the disturbance, but by integrating transformations while evolving" (2000). In Sarajevo, in addition to the landscape, the conflict has also changed the nature of the tourism presentation by adding a range of products built around the theme of war 30 . Some actors and witnesses of the Bosnian war began their conversion in tourism, mainly in thematic visits around conflict (Naef 2014, pp. 295-297). The structured development of these presentations, alongside other forms of tourism still practiced in Sarajevo, is a form of post-conflict tourism resilience. The integration of conflict-related sites, such as the Tunnel Museum, into the overall touristic scene also reflects this "resilient" evolution of tourism in the city

52 In the case of Mostar the evolution is more ambiguous. The traditional tourist presentation, focused on the Stari Most and the historic center, has indeed recovered since the physical reconstruction of these places, including the bridge completed in 2004. However, the "avoidance strategy" (Bigand et al., 2011) adopted by public actors with regard to heritage tourism and the memory of the conflict, places the cursor halfway between a "return to normal" and an evolution that integrates new landscape elements generated by the conflict. The case of Mostar thus corresponds, from our point of view, to a process of tourist resilience that has been initiated but not completed, hampered by the social and political tensions and the multitude of issues surrounding the legacy of the conflict in this city.

Conclusion: the many stakes of post-conflict tourism. 

53 Dark tourism as a form of auxiliary tourism

54 Whether in Sarajevo or Mostar, dark tourism is not the main attraction or the predominant tourist activity. It is part of a post-conflict landscape and is therefore added to the pre-existing tourist attractions of the destination. This dimension of dark tourism "added" to "conventional" tourism that existed before the conflict is, in our opinion, a particularly interesting track to be observed in other areas, as is shown for example in Northern Ireland (Causevic and Lynch 2008). The non-confinement to a "dramatized" image linked to the war, while integrating the heritage from this period into the "heritage stock" of the destination, would allow a certain balance of interpretation between the pre-existing heritage and the new heritage.

55 Memorialization, heritage and the political issue

• 31 See the example of the "Partisan Memorial Cemetery" in Mostar. Designed in the 1960s to celebrate t (...)

56 The political landscape and possible intercommunity tensions play a central role in the process of memorialization and the post-conflict evolution of heritage. This applies to new heritage as well as pre-existing heritage. Certainly, civil society (and tourists) sometimes manage to "heritagize" places in an unofficial way. But it is the local and / or national public and political actors who decide on the official nature of the heritagization or even the (active or passive) "deheritagization" of the places 31 .

57 An "intangible heritage" of the conflict?

58 Our work initially focused on material heritage modified or created by conflict. But with the advance of research, other immaterial elements have challenged us. Examples include survivors’ stories (faithful or fictional, neutral or biased accounts), expertise developed under siege, linguistic or artistic expressions related to the period of war, and sometimes even the urban legends that emerge from episodes of conflict. It is a constellation of elements that can be considered by some social groups (for example, the people of Sarajevo) as part of their identity redefined by conflict. A part of a collective memory transmitted from generation to generation by the narration or through mediation and conservation media, such as the exhibition of the history museum of B-H that we have mentioned. This sketch could be raw material for recognition as intangible heritage.

• 32 No official account of the 1992-1995 conflict is taught to tour guides throughout their training. D (...)

59 Collecting these elements can help build a new historical narrative. An approach that would be useful in the case of B-H, where the absence of consensual historical narrative leaves room for sometimes diametrically opposed interpretations of events 32 and contributes to fueling post-conflict inter-community tensions. A new inheritance, material and immaterial, resulting from the conflict, would be likely to help rebuild a collective identity that transcends the divisions of war.

60 The emotional color chart and the transition "hot" / "cold"

61 If the field study in B-H makes it possible to affirm that the "cold" approach is not yet relevant (Naef 2012), the decline in time and the emotional distance in the interpretation make the "hot" approach no longer suitable (Uzzell 1989). Thus, the memory of the conflict gives rise to a "lukewarm" interpretation (Kassouha 2018, pp. 300-304), where the emotional dimension is still lively but space-time has begun to attenuate it. This "warm" intermediate zone in which we situate the interpretation of the memory and heritage of the conflict in B-H (and in other areas) is far from homogeneous. In our Bosnian examples we have already noted a gap between the two cities. Sarajevo is thus located in a colder zone of the color chart, with a relatively consensual work of memorialization and heritage of the conflict (but not unanimous). While in Mostar, the "avoidance strategy" adopted by public actors reveals a warmer positioning, likely to generate tension.

62 This subjective dimension of the relation to history (Lévi-Strauss 1993) explains in part the observed shift, from one area to another and from one culture to another, in the interpretation of the legacies of conflicts and other traumatic events. Evidently multiple factors, internal and external, related to the event, the place and the historical and socio-political context, are involved in this dynamic. The identification of the factors that influence these relationships between society / memory / history, and the study of their interactions, would be an important analytical tool. Such a measurement grid would enhance our understanding of the dynamics of tourism in the post-conflict and post-traumatic landscape in general, both in the short and long term.

63 We present here, as a conclusion, a sketch of this grid in which we situate examples seen in Mostar and Sarajevo, in comparison with other more or less recent examples (the Battlefield of Verdun, the Auschwitz concentration camp, or the "still smoking" ruins of the destroyed neighbourhoods of Aleppo in Syria in early 2017 (Kassouha 2018, 261).

Figure 8: Representation of the "felt" interpretation of several examples of places related to "traumatic events", in B-H and elsewhere.

KASSOUHA 2019

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1 Initially a physical concept indicating "the ability of an object to recover its initial state after a shock or continuous pressure", taken up in the ecological and social sciences with systemic dimensions including the ability to absorb shocks and to integrate their effects in the functioning of the systems (Dauphiné and Provitolo 2007, 116). Applied to tourism, resilience comes in two forms: the resilience of communities / societies vis-à-vis the undesirable effects of tourism "quality for withstanding undesired change caused by tourism activity" (Berbés-Blázquez and Scott 2017, 11) and the resilience of tourism vis-à-vis shocks (socio-economic, political, natural disasters, ...) " the ability of the tourism system or a destination to recover from external shocks " (ibid). In our article we refer to the latter form with regard to the resilience of post-conflict tourism.

2 The conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina began in April 1992 amidst inter-community tensions exacerbated by the independence referendum held in February of the same year. The Serbian (Orthodox) nationalist forces of the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska (RS), supported by the Yugoslav army (JNA), led the assault in an attempt to regain control of the country. They dominated part of the territory and besieged Sarajevo (the siege lasted for more than three years). The attack was countered by forces composed of Bosniaks (Muslims) and Croats (Catholics). In 1993, this alliance turned to confrontation, fueled by the separatist approaches of Croatian nationalists in Bosnia, supported by Croatia. This confrontation ended in 1994 under international pressure, with the creation of a federation between Bosniaks and Croats. In the summer of 1995, international military strikes forced the Serbian forces to negotiate the end of the conflict. The Dayton Agreement was ratified by all three parties in December 1995, sealing the end of the war. It stipulates the maintenance of the Republika Srpska [RS] and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina [FB-H] (between Bosniaks and Croats) as two entities of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also governs the sharing of power between the three communities. (Bougarel 1996).

3 Translated into French by the terms "dark", "black", "obscure" or "macabre" tourism, semantic analysis is still needed to define the most appropriate term. The very (too?) vast aspect of the concept itself makes the task even more delicate. This is why we chose using the English term “dark tourism " in the French version of this paper. Nevertheless, in the latest French-language publications, the term "tourisme sombre" (dark) seems to be increasingly used (ESPACE Magazine, 2017).

4 Tourism to places "with which one maintains a strong personal biographical relationship, (...), those of suffering, a loss, a past oppression lived personally or by members of the group to which one belongs" (Bechtel and Jurgenson 2013, p.13) where "the purely entertaining aspect passes (...) in the background" (Crahay 2014).

6 This is the most frequently sold product to tourists according to a souvenir shop manager of the historical center of Sarajevo, comments collected on 09/07/2016

7 These are impacts of shells on the ground that have been filled with a red resin, giving them a floral appearance. They are scattered all over the city. Initially they marked the impacts of shells that caused several casualties. As the initiative was reiterated, there is no indication that all the "Roses" really mark places of brutal death. The approach is still part of the most common memory symbols in the city. However, the "Roses" are slowly disappearing as the city's pavements and sidewalks are maintained and renewed (Halilovich, 2013: 106).

8 Main artery of Sarajevo very regularly targeted by snipers during the siege of the city killing and wounding passers-by. The notoriety of this avenue with tourists today and its nickname go back to those dark hours of conflict.

9 The armed Communist movement of resistance to Nazism, led by Marshal Tito during the Second World War. This movement became the base of the JNA (Yugoslav People's Army) with the creation of Communist Yugoslavia in 1945.

10 Since the end of the conflict, B-H governance has been divided into several administrative levels. The State consists of two entities: the "Republika Srpska" (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FB-H). The two entities are divided into municipalities. In FB-H, the municipalities are gathered into 10 cantons, while in RS, the system is more centralized and the cantons do not exist.

11 These two massacres resulted in dozens of deaths and were triggers for NATO's military intervention in the conflict. It was NATO aerial bombing of Serb outposts in the city's highlands (after the second massacre in 1995) that brought Serbs to the negotiating table and ended the siege of Sarajevo.

12 « With this exhibition, we have tried to avoid giving final judgments, ideological opinions and qualifications. We are leaving them to history science and time. We have primarily opted for being true witnesses of the time and events behind the Sarajevo “closed doors”, with the authentic exhibits being, hopefully, documents that the future will appreciate » . Source: presentation sign at the entrance of the exhibition.

13 Constructed in the greatest secrecy in 1993, the tunnel extended nearly 800 metres underneath the tarmac of Sarajevo Airport, which was then controlled by United Nations forces. This allowed the city to receive life support, electricity, fuel, and other necessities, and to resupply the Bosnian military forces with munitions and light arms. Source: Bosnia Report, Adriatic Light at the End of the Sarajevo Tunnel, Bosnia Report, No. 16, October 1996. http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/juloct96/adriatic.cfm, accessed on 16 January 2018.

14 Agence France-Presse, "The Sarajevo War Tunnel Survives as a Museum", New York Times, 1 February 2004, https:// www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/international/europe/sarajevos-wartime-tunnel-survives-as-museum.html, accessed on 21 January 2018

15 More than 100,000 visitors every year, according to the museum brochure collected from the tourist information center.

16 Alic, Anes, « Saving Sarajevo’s Lifeline », Time, 19 March 2002, http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,218633,00.html, accessed on 01 February 2018.

17 Burns, John F., « A Crude 1,000-Yard Tunnel Is Sarajevo’s Secret Lifeline », The New York Times, 15 August 1993, http://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/15/world/a-crude-1000-yard-tunnel-is-sarajevo-s-secret-lifeline.html, accessed on 15 January 2018.

18 After their alliance in 1992 to repel the offensive of the Serbian forces, the Bosnian and Croatian forces ended-up in direct confrontation in 1993 caused by interethnic tensions and nationalist discourse. Mostar, which crystallized these tensions, was cut in two along the Bulevar, main north-south axis. The modern western part fell under Croatian control and the older eastern part under Bosniak control. Ethnic cleansing was practiced on both sides of the front line, exacerbating hatred between the two communities. On 9 November 1993, the forces HVO (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane) Croatian Defense Council destroyed the Stari Most, old Ottoman bridge and symbol of the city. This act of "urbicide" irreparably divided the population (Tratnjek, 2013). Despite an agreement signed in the United States in 1994 ending hostilities, and the identical reconstruction of the bridge in 2004, Mostar remained cut in two by an immaterial border for years after the end of the conflict. Even today, this cleavage between Croatian and Bosniak parties remains valid, although efforts have been made to unite the two sides of the city.

19 Comments collected during the interview of a supervisor of the Mostar Tourist Info Centre on 04/07/2016.

20 A Croatian village of B-H where the Virgin Mary would have begun to appear in 1981 to several young people from the village on a nearby hill. The "event" attracted attention and aroused a pilgrimage movement to the place with the recrudescence of the Marian apparitions since. This event would have contributed to forging the national identity (Catholic / post-Yugoslavian) of the Croats of the region (Claverie, 2002). The apparitions continue today, mobilizing a crowd of pilgrims.

21 Backpackers are one of the main segments of the tourism market in B-H in general (Causevic, 2008, p 304)

22 Le Petit Futé, « BANQUE DE VERRE (STAKLENA BANKA) - MOSTAR », petitfute.com, 2017, https:// www.petitfute.com/v45968-mostar/c1173-visites-points-d-interet/c937-monuments/c924-architecture-contemporaine/1533781-banque-de-verre-staklena-banka.html, accessed on 01 July 2017.

23 « The Sniper Tower in Mostar », Kanannie, 29 October 2013, http://kanannie.com/2013/10/29/the-sniper-tower-in-mostar/, accessed on 13 August 2017.

24 HVO (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane) Croatian Defense Council, the main military force of Bosnian Croats during the war. See note

25 ARBiH ( Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine ) Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina during the conflict, mainly composed of Bosniaks

26 AFP, « Explosion à Mostar sur fond de tensions accrues », 20 Minutes, 14 January 2013, http://www.20min.ch/ro/news/monde/story/28691170, accessed on 30 January 2017.

27 Clements, Max, « Sarajevo: a cosmopolitan capital in an ethnically cleansed state ». The Independent. 26 August 2017. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/sarajevo-a-cosmopolitan-capital-in-an-ethnically-cleansed-state-a7907956.html, accessed on 22 September 2018.

28 Mulongo, Freddy, « Sarajevo: La ville s’est reconstruite à tour de bras, mais les habitants ne peuvent pas se libérer de la guerre ! », Club de Mediapart, 18 June 2014, https://blogs.mediapart.fr/freddy-mulongo/blog/180614/sarajevo-la-ville-s-est-reconstruite-tour-de-bras-mais-les-habitants-ne-peuvent-pas-se-liberer-d, accessed on 10 February 2018.

29 Notion originally evoked by several specialists in architecture and urban planning from the former Yugoslavia. It describes the phenomenon of deliberate destruction of the city (Coward, 2008, pp. 38-39), a destruction that goes beyond the physical destruction of buildings and touches the city as a living space in common.

30 Patrick Naef offers an in-depth analysis of several examples of guided tours dedicated to the Bosnian war proposed by a variety of actors in Sarajevo: a veteran, a young Bosnian who lived through the siege as a child, a former British reporter who worked at Sarajevo during the conflict, as well as other offers of local tourist agencies (Naef, 2016, pp. 220-231).

31 See the example of the "Partisan Memorial Cemetery" in Mostar. Designed in the 1960s to celebrate the memory of the Partisans of the city, it was left unmaintained by the municipality since the end of the conflict in 1995. This state of neglect is due to political and identity reasons linked to the legacy of the Second World War and the emergence since the 1992-1995 conflict of ultranationalist currents (Kassouha, 2018, pp. 257-258).

32 No official account of the 1992-1995 conflict is taught to tour guides throughout their training. During the visits, some guides tell what they have witnessed during the conflict, others relate what was transmitted to them by the direct or indirect witnesses. In both cases, the absence of an official narrative leaves the guides free to "dramatize" the narrative, to the extent of presenting urban legends as historical facts or modifying certain information according to the political or community sensitivities of each, without any means of control by the authorities. Comments collected during the interview of Vedran Grebo, licensed tour guide in Sarajevo, on 07/07/2016.

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Pour citer cet article, référence électronique.

Zeid A. Kassouha , « Post-conflict tourist landscapes: between the heritage of conflict and the hybridization of tourism activity », Via [En ligne], 15 | 2019, mis en ligne le 22 novembre 2019, consulté le 04 mai 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/viatourism/3984 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/viatourism.3984

Zeid A. Kassouha

PhD in Geography, research Fellow, UMR Espace Dev (228) / Avignon Université

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Cultural conflict, tourism

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A cultural conflict is a dislike, hostility, or struggle between communities who have different philosophies and ways of living, resulting in contradictory aspirations and behaviors. The notion originates from sociological conflict theories and anthropological concepts of intercultural relations.

Intensive development of tourism as part of globalizing trends often leads to rapid changes in local cultures of “exotic” territories. The negative consequences of modernization contribute to the intensification of conflicts caused by alternative perceptions of the world determined by different systems of cultural values and beliefs. Including axio-normative conditions, cultural conflicts are often provoked by the socioeconomic situation in given communities.

For a conflict to occur, there must be a direct interaction between at least two different cultures. In tourism this often occurs on the host-guest axis and may arise from tourists’ expectations towards the product. They may be caused by...

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Hottola, P. 2004 Culture Confusion: Intercultural Adaptation in Tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 31:447-466.

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Reisinger, I., and L. Turner 2003 Cross-cultural Behavior in Tourism: Concepts and Analysis. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.

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Robinson, M., and P. Boniface 1999 Tourism and Cultural Conflicts. Wallingford: CABI.

Stein, R. 2008 Itineraries in Conflict: Israelis, Palestinians and the Political Lives of Tourism. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Banaszkiewicz, M., Buczkowska, K. (2014). Cultural conflict, tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_249-1

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People are Traveling to War Zones for Tourism

Because adventure travel just hasn’t gone far enough

Mary Beth Griggs

You can run a marathon in Antarctica or slide down the side of a volcano in Nicaragua, but what if that just doesn’t thrill you enough? How about a trip to snowboard in Afghanistan? Or to meet with militia in Libya? 

In an article for the Atlantic , Debra Kamin explores the rise of "dark tourism"--of people deliberately venturing into places that are, or were, dangerous. Among the more notable examples, Kamin says that tourists are visiting the Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border to watch the smoke rise. From there people can sit back, relax, and watch the explosions from the Syrian civil war--all from a safe distance.

In early June, Marom tells me, the viewpoint was especially packed, as news spread through the Golan Heights’ quiet farming communities that Syrian rebels had overrun Assad loyalists to take control of the United Nations checkpoint on the Israeli side of the border. The rebels held the checkpoint, which was once a humanitarian crossing between Israel and Syria, for a handful of hours, during which tanks barreled through air choked with mortar rounds and smoke. Safe beyond the buffer zone, hundreds of spectators sweated in the heat and gaped at the action below.

There is historical precedent for this kind of grisly travel. During the American Civil War  spectators gathered to watch the first battle of Bull Run, and ended up retreating with the Union army back to Washington.

So what motivates people to head into the world's dark places?

“There’s no such thing as a dark tourist, only people interested in the world around them,” Philip Stone of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research told the Atlantic . “You and I are probably dark tourists when we visit Ground Zero. We’re not dark tourists—we’re just interested in what happens in our lives.”

Or, perhaps, interested in what happens in other people’s lives.

Returning to memorials, and to the sites where people died, is one thing. But going to a place of active conflict for no better reason than because you want to see conflict? That's something totally different.

From the tourists who watched the smoke rise over Bull Run, to the people who track missiles as they arch over the Golan Heights or the Gaza strip, there is something particularly macabre about traveling to a conflict zone to watch the bombs burst like fireworks. It might have the same loud noises as a Fourth of July display, but in those places tourists are seeing someone’s home, world and life come crashing down while they, literally, watch from the sidelines, titillated by their brush with danger.

For her story, Kamin interviewed Ben Hadar, a man who took a vacation to Ukraine during the protests last spring. He wanted a vacation, and airfare to Kiev was cheap:

Hadar and a friend, his football team’s cornerback, spoke with locals in Kiev’s Independence Square, watched the Super Bowl at a nearby bar, and even gave a Denver Broncos flag to a group of protesters in a tent city. The experience was thrilling. “There were people ready to die for what they believed in. It was so moving,” Hadar says.

The people who were willing to die probably found it very moving too. But their experience didn’t end with a plane trip back home. They were already there. 

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Mary Beth Griggs | | READ MORE

Mary Beth Griggs is a freelance science journalist based in New York City.

Conflicting logics for crisis management in tourism

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 30 June 2021

Issue publication date: 30 November 2021

In tourism research, crisis management mostly refers to operational, on-location, chaotic measures taken as a crisis strikes a tourism destination. Related to COVID-19, this paper focuses on public initiatives representing strategic-oriented crisis management while showing that such initiatives may not help those needing support. More precisely, the paper discusses and exemplifies the conflict of logics between private sector interests and public initiatives related to crisis management in tourism.

Design/methodology/approach

The main data source is a structured newspaper review of COVID-19 and tourism as covered in the Swedish press, comprising more than 4,000 items.

Findings indicate logics manifested at different levels and a logic gap between small and large firms. Large firms are potentially better able to adapt but tend to wait passively for financial support rather than reformulate their business operations.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to research on crisis management in tourism by taking a public, societal-level view of crisis management juxtaposed against the local actors' sphere of operations. The conflict of logics proves how support needs to be improved to better help a sector in crisis. Thematic logics are introduced as a concept and captured in the conflicts between the present and the future, survival and change and operations and aggregates in crisis management. Broadly, the paper provides valuable insights into the future of tourism while indicating policy failures in the sector.

• Private/public

Öberg, C. (2021), "Conflicting logics for crisis management in tourism", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 311-321. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-10-2020-0191

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2021, Christina Öberg

Published in Journal of Tourism Futures . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

The tourism sector comprises large firms operating as travel, accommodation and entertainment providers and many small entrepreneurs producing various local offerings ( Linton and Öberg, 2020 ). Private initiatives are fundamental for tourism and endorsed as good ways to create business and growth, especially in geographical areas with limited opportunities ( Chi and Qu, 2008 ). Crises, such as the COVID-19 outbreak in 2019/2020 ( Radic et al. , 2020 ), have harmed most parts of the tourism sector, potentially over the long term: Travel bans disrupt most operations ( Gossling et al. , 2020 ; Hall et al. , 2020 ) and recession generally affects tourism negatively ( Papatheodorou et al. , 2010 ). While tourism operations rely primarily on private initiatives to stay afloat, such crises call for public support.

The public support focuses on how the sector might operate in future, including broad initiatives to develop relevant competencies to generate employment ( Martin and Scott, 2000 ; Audretsch, 2004 ) with less emphasis on individual firms. The private entrepreneurs focus on staying in business, with entrepreneurial initiatives possibly leading to a (temporary) refocus of operations. This gives rise to a potential conflict of logics ( Greenwood et al. , 2010 ) between, on the one hand, entrepreneurial firms' sudden requests for public support and, on the other, how public support albeit intended to support business life, would not necessarily help individual entrepreneurs.

What conflicts of logic have emerged as the consequence of attempted crisis management?

How can they be understood in terms of representations?

The paper contributes to previous research by addressing the conflict of logics related to crisis management in tourism. To date, research has concentrated on the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism ( Farzanegan et al. , 2021 ) and how it is transforming the sector ( Gossling et al. , 2020 ; Hall et al. , 2020 ) now and beyond the pandemic ( Assaf and Scuderi, 2020 ; Brouder et al. , 2020 ). However, as indicated by the Journal of Tourism Futures special issue call, less is known about strategic-oriented crisis management related to the crisis. With most research describing COVID-19 and its consequences in specific regions, theorizing related to the crisis remains limited ( Cohen and Cohen, 2012 ; Nasir et al. , 2020 ). Zenker and Kock (2020) call for more structured and integrated approaches to studying tourism related to COVID-19, which aligns with how this paper illuminates the broader questions of public support logic, conflicts in orientation to tourism, crisis management related to conflicts of logic and how attempts to manage a crisis can actually exacerbate it. Research focusing on public support in tourism remains rare ( Dredge and Jamal, 2015 ; Shao et al. , 2021 ). Addressing the tourism crisis from the perspective of parties' logics is a response not only to the call for more interdisciplinary research related to COVID-19 ( Wen et al. , 2020 ) but also to the present special issue call that highlights the risk of overlooking policy failures and structural issues. Moreover, this allows to indicate how the structure itself may lead to remedies that, worst case, actually intensify a crisis. Theoretically, the paper contributes to research on crisis management in tourism ( Mair et al. , 2016 ) by taking a societal (public)-level view of a crisis juxtaposed against the local actors' sphere of operations. More precisely, the paper introduces the concept of thematic logics in crisis management and portrays it as conflicts between the present and the future, survival and change, and operations and aggregates. This theorizing contributes to research on crises beyond the current COVID-19 crisis in tourism. The conflict of logics manifests as contradictory forces, proving how public support and the expectations around it may need to be improved to better support a sector in crisis.

The paper is structured as follows: A brief overview of crises and crisis management in tourism follows this introduction. Next, the theoretical framing of logics is introduced. The research design follows thereafter. The empirical part of the paper is based on analyses of news items, and the findings are subsequently summarized and analyzed. The paper ends with conclusions, managerial and theoretical contributions and ideas for further research.

Context: crisis management in tourism

“Crisis” in tourism research refers to any sudden, unplanned disruption causing negative effects on the number of tourists or tourism income at a destination ( Blake and Sinclair, 2003 ; Hall, 2010 ). Typically, the management of such crises would be local, acute and a matter of reducing risks to life or nature. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic ( Radic et al. , 2020 ), research on structured or strategic crisis or disaster management in tourism is limited ( Faulkner, 2001 ). The literature tends to focus on the effects of natural disasters or political turmoil on tourism destinations ( Saha and Yap, 2014 ) and the operational handling of such disruptions as they occurred, which is mostly described as chaotic, unstructured management in the eye of the crisis ( Sonmez, 1998 ; Ritchie, 2004 ). Summarizing previous research on crisis management in tourism, Mair et al. (2016) exemplify such topics as lack of communication among stakeholders, sensationalism in the media, ineffective marketing messages, poor management, damage to destination image and reputation and changes in tourism behavior as post-crises effects. Hystad and Keller (2008) refer to the steps of preparedness, response and recovery in tourism crisis management, while Ritchie (2008) describes reduction and readiness as means to provide a more organized approach to crisis management in tourism. Moreover, there are attempts to integrate tourism research with crisis management from the broader organizational management literature to provide a structured, pro-active orientation to crises, highlighting the variation in the conceptualization of crises ( Papatheodorou et al. , 2010 ).

Following Papatheodorou et al. (2010) , and for the topic of this paper, the question of what kind of crisis COVID-19 represents for tourism deserves some attention. While being perceived as sudden, the crisis itself could be defined as long term, with new consequences emerging as the COVID-19 virus continues to spread. The crisis is global rather than local, while local (national) responses may themselves cause additional crises and/or deepen or reduce its effects which, ultimately, makes it difficult to determine the causes and the consequences. For tourism, the effects of the crisis would mostly have emerged as a consequence of the handling of the pandemic in terms of travel bans, restrictions on the number of people simultaneously visiting restaurants, exhibitions or other types of events, and potentially long-term paradigm shifts in how we travel. As a cause of the crisis manifested in tourism, the handling of the pandemic—together with the mental effects on consumers' notion of traveling—means that the suddenness of the crisis ( Blake and Sinclair, 2003 ; Hall, 2010 ) is partly replaced by continuous new causal drivers that, while affecting large portions of the tourism sector, would be unequally distributed among destinations, types of operations and individual firms.

Although some studies have dealt with crises in tourism related to pandemics prior to COVID-19— Wang (2009) , using examples including the SARS outbreak in Taiwan in 2003, points at how such crises reduce the number of tourists in a country, and Kuo et al. (2008) draw similar conclusions for avian flu and SARS in Asia—most of what we know about the impacts of a pandemic on tourism is found in more recent studies ( Assaf and Scuderi, 2020 ; Brouder et al. , 2020 ), leaving many questions unanswered.

Theoretical framework: logic

“Logic” refers to symbols and practices demonstrating assumptions, values and beliefs through which individuals create an understanding of their daily activities ( Friedland and Alford, 1991 ; Thornton and Ocasio, 1999 ), making individuals consider their way of acting as rational. Logics therefore comprise preferences and influence behaviors. Meanwhile, and in the shaping and manifesting of logics, individuals share logics and make sense of each other's practices through shared belief systems. As such, logics should be collectively understood: Multiple parties may adhere to a logic, which influences their behavior and guides them through social constructs.

The dynamic character of logics indicates how they are challenged and change over time ( Lounsbury, 2002 ). In the conceptualization of logics, researchers have taken the position that either there is a dominant logic that changes as society develops, or that various parties represent different logics which challenge each other. This leads to the assumption that there is a hierarchy of logics ( Marquis and Tilcsik, 2013 ; Geissinger et al. , 2019 ). For example, researchers refer to institutional orders to define the meta-level logics of markets, states and religions ( Thornton et al. , 2012 ); field-level logics describe the logics of, for instance, a group of individuals or an industry sector ( Nigam and Ocasio, 2010 ) and micro-level logics represent not only a firm or multiple actors existing under similar conditions ( Besharov and Smith, 2014 ) but also situation-specific cores, that is, including specific people or organizations as well as areas of foci or situations.

Together, and acknowledging that meta-, field- and micro-level logics may exist simultaneously, logics may be described as competing, co-existing, hybrids or bricolages. Here, the potential for conflict among logics comes to the fore ( Greenwood et al. , 2010 ) where competing logics implies that representatives of one logic try to make their logic the dominant one. Co-existing logics would allow for individuals to switch among logics. Hybrid logics refers to the bridging of logics, constructing a new, combined logic. Bricolage, lastly, means that individuals combine aspects from various logics to a micro-level logic entailing partly shared, partly different and potentially opposing logics.

Identifying conflicts of logic does not mean that this paper addresses how to solve issues related to crisis management in tourism per se , rather that it illuminates an area that, if neglected, would increase the risk that attempts to solve a crisis would only compound the situation or lead to problems being left unsolved. This makes it important to ask: What conflicts of logic have emerged as the consequence of attempted crisis management? How can they be understood in terms of representation?

Data capturing method

The empirical part of this paper is based on a structured newspaper review complemented with opinion from the tourism and public sector at a seminar on tourism in Sweden, which was the inspiration to write this paper. The newspaper review examines items published in the Swedish press. Although Sweden has taken a different approach to the lockdown experienced in most countries, the tourism industry has still been hit hard. By keeping businesses running—the Swedish approach to COVID-19—the country shows some early consequences of the crisis that other countries may experience later, and it therefore represents an interesting context in which to study crisis management in tourism. A few previous studies related to COVID-19 have used data from the media ( Chen et al. , 2020 ; Shao et al. , 2021 ), but these concern other regions of the world and raise different issues.

Published media data—all textual and online published media (including radio and TV broadcasts) from the major national and local Swedish newspapers and media houses—was drawn from a database ( Business Retriever ) over the period 2019–2020 to capture the COVID-19 outbreak to date. The last update of the review was conducted on October 30th, 2020. The following initial search string was used (translated from Swedish): (“ tourism ” or “ tourist ”) and (“ covid ” or “ corona ”) followed by the second search string “hospitality” and (“ covid ” or “ corona ”). The search for “covid” would include any reference to COVID-19, and various word combinations were tested to create a meaningful result for, and capturing content related to, the topic of this paper.

The first (“tourism”) search resulted in 3,123 newspaper items, representing short pieces to editorial features, with single items distributed over the period 2019 to January 2020 to a peak in the period May to July with an average of about 500 items per month. The remaining months from March 2020 onwards produced about 300 items per month. The second search (“hospitality”) produced 1,187 items, with a peak from March to June 2020 (approximately 200 items per month).

Newspaper items as a data source have their benefits and weaknesses. One of the claimed benefits is how they allow for capturing data at the time that events occurred ( Huber and Power, 1985 ). Another benefit is how newspaper reviews effectively manage to capture and systematize a large amount of data encompassing multiple perspectives ( Öberg, 2009 ). As the research was conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, newspaper reviews provided empirical data that would have been difficult to capture from face-to-face meetings. That said, one of the weaknesses of capturing data from media sources is that journalists or editors are inevitably biased toward the extreme rather than the average. Moreover, as more and more newspaper items re-report directly from, for instance, firms' press releases, newspaper items would be biased by the senders' viewpoint.

Data analysis

To analyze the data, newspaper items were first categorized into a grid describing on the one hand the parties and, on the other, their activities and experienced consequences. The parties were categorized as: tourism firms (travel agencies, accommodation providers, exhibitions, museums, other tourist attractions and entertainment organizers), parties representing the public (municipal or state-level initiatives) or funds for business support, and based on their size of operations and geographical coverage (local, national, global). This allowed to compare the perspectives and logics of the various parties. Text items were incorporated into the grid and compared within each dimension to establish empirical codes ( Gioia and Pitre, 1990 ). They were subsequently condensed by comparisons among text items, while remaining connected with the raw material and publishing date for traceability and the ability to construct a timeline of development. To give voice to the parties involved, the analysis favored direct quotations to avoid media bias as much as possible. Together, this provided a content-oriented coding structure ( Krippendorff, 2004 ) where the descriptive codes were iterated from the documents and reduced in a number of processual steps ( Pratt, 2009 ). Aggregated codes within each cell of the grid were then compared across perspectives to help capture conflicts of logic in activities and experiences and to relate these to (characteristics of) parties. This comparison among perspectives based on rationales behind activities and experiences enabled the identification of various dimensional conflicts of logics described as thematical logics between the present and the future, survival and change and operations and aggregates. The findings are presented below in a timeline narrative with direct (translated) quotations from the newspaper items to illustrate points, while the different perspectives and characteristics are noted throughout. Central to the analysis is identification of not only the types of logic conflicts that emerged over the data capturing period but also the parties that represented the various logics.

The typical tourism firm, at least in the northern part of Europe, operates cyclically, that is, its business is highly dependent on the seasons. This means that it has in its DNA the need to cope with a low season while seeking to exploit business during the high season, or that it strikes a balance between tourists and business people, or tourists and locals as its customers.

As COVID-19 started to really affect businesses in March 2020, attention was focused early on the Swedish tourism sector as traveling restrictions emerged on the agenda. In early March, this affected foreign visitors to events and delegates planning to attend foreign trade fairs. However, by mid-March, claims were already being made about a downturn in the economy such that several tourism firms and event companies announced their intention to lay off staff, despite them operating locally and/or marketing to business people to offset low demand for leisure tourism. For example, large companies commonly took precautions or used the crisis to solve financial issues that had occurred before. They appeared to be driven by a logic of “if we do not get paid, we'll cancel,” which was evident in the cancelation of sports events and tournaments.

Meanwhile, representatives of the public sector pointed out the potential opportunities of the crisis, as captured in the following quotation: “This has positive consequences for the staycation. Rather than traveling abroad, people will have a vacation at home once everything has settled down. If an event is canceled, there are alternative activities” ( Norrköpings Tidningar , March 14th, 2020). In contrast, representatives of the private sector held a less optimistic view: “It is like a horror movie. It's pitch black, not least for hospitality. The business cycle has jumped on its brakes, and COVID is escalating fast.” Around the same time, calls were being made for a crisis fund, while the news reported on how predominantly small companies were trying to help one another.

Public intervention followed in the form of postponed tax payments and, later, temporary reductions in employer taxes. Loans were introduced but, from the viewpoint of small firms, they appeared to favor only larger firms: “Why introduce an expense loan? This is a really bad proposition” ( Länstidningen Södertälje, March 23rd, 2020). Small firms that were not eligible for these loans, reached out to their customers, begging them to continue buying their products and using their services, while asking for support through a fund providing seed money. Hence, small firms focused on remaining in business at any price, eventually meaning that they tried to challenge the broad-brush restrictions imposed across society.

A tourism governance association introduced support for training to help tourism firms adapt their operations, the idea being to help firms in crisis prepare themselves for the post-pandemic future by developing their workforce competencies: “The education will help them keep staff and be prepared for better days” ( GöteborgDirekt , March 28th, 2020). Meanwhile, firms described how they needed immediate support as the number of bankruptcies rose, while municipal representatives continued to argue that the summer would bring an upturn for businesses (April 7th, 2020). As noted by an entrepreneur in the tourism sector: “There is a crisis package, but it is of no use in this sector. It does not matter if you reduce employer tax if you have no income. The crisis intervention is truly standardized … Laying off staff is not a solution since the firms pay for this in the short term … it is the lack of cash that breaks firms” ( Falköpings Tidning , April 9th, 2020).

The government tried to conceive various ways of keeping the economy running more generally, which meant that certain parts of the tourism sector experienced partial relief while others felt that government initiatives were unfair (April 23rd, 2020). The month of May came, and those representing both the public sector and the tourism industry had high expectations for the summer. However, further travel bans were imposed within Sweden and limits were placed on the number of people allowed to congregate in one place. Shortly afterwards, local events including concerts and exhibitions were canceled (May 7th, 2020). Since Sweden had decided to keep the economy running, foreign countries' respective bans on travel to Sweden over the summer significantly reduced the number of customers in the tourism sector. Private and public sector spokespeople continued to disagree: “For the firms in the tourism sector, this is a catastrophe” (private firm) versus “In the wait for the record summers of 2021 and 2022, creativity should generate new solutions” (public sector representative) ( GotlandsAllehanda , May 9th, 2020).

Small firms operating locally tried to change their business models, focusing on residents rather than tourists, concluding that it was a matter of survival rather than profits (May 23rd, 2020). This meant that, among other things, they withheld their salaries to remain in business. Governmental support was increasingly directed at the sector (May 26th, 2020), while the focus continued to be on providing training for laid-off staff and enhancing competencies while firms struggled to survive. Hence, the focus was on preparing firms for the post-crisis future rather than helping them survive the crisis (June 1st, 2020). In early June, some national travel bans were lifted for the summer, and initiatives were introduced to promote safe traveling and tourism. A restriction of 50 people congregating in one place was maintained and monetary support started to be directed at the sector, including municipal tourism organizations. Museums opened up while events continued to be canceled. Public sector support continued to be directed partially at education and partially at life after COVID-19: “Make Sweden a need-to-go-there destination for foreign visitors. It is about being innovative, daring and progressive in the communication” ( Besöksliv , July 2nd, 2020).

In August, it was reported how Swedish residents had not only spent their vacations at home, visiting attractive destinations in Sweden, but also how they had disregarded restrictions. In an effort to avoid the anticipated crowds, more Swedes than normal traveled to the mountains, but this only led to overcrowding in those areas. Some tourism companies tried to refocus operations to provide events online or take extra precautions in delivering their services. Overall, the number of COVID cases in Sweden declined over the summer season. Nevertheless, companies continued to go bankrupt and it was clear that the crisis was not over (August 20th, 2020).

As the autumn arrived, the prospect of a new wave of COVID infections presented itself. Meanwhile, media reported on the summer—its losers and winners (October 6th, 2020)—and a notion of “the new normal” ( TT , October 8th, 2020) was introduced to claim how tourism patterns had changed and how the tourism sector had shrunk: “We will continue to travel, but not as before. For those daring or being able to see the new horizon, there is the potential for a new future,” reported a public sector representative ( TT , October 8th, 2020). Increasingly, the focus was on monetary support, while the tourism firms asked for fewer restrictions, especially the limitation on how many individuals could meet in one place at the same time.

As this is written, a new wave of COVID infections is being reported, with several city areas in Sweden going into lockdown, and any easing of restrictions has ended. Meanwhile, October is by no means a popular tourist season in Sweden.

As the findings section indicates, there are differences between how various parties make sense of the COVID-19 crisis and how they believe it should be managed ( Hystad and Keller, 2008 ; Ritchie, 2008 ), which conveys different—and indeed conflicting—logics between parties ( Friedland and Alford, 1991 ; Thornton and Ocasio, 1999 ; Besharov and Smith, 2014 ). More precisely, the findings point out a number of conflicts, which are dominated by the conflict between the private and the public sectors, but where certain groups of private firms may adhere to the public sector logic.

Looking first at private firms, these are focused on handling the present, surviving and, as the crisis evolves, redefining their business models. The tourism sector, though, is diverse in terms of those firms operating within it ( Linton and Öberg, 2020 ). Among the private firms, there is a logic gap between small and large firms. Large firms are potentially better able to adapt but tend to wait passively for financial support rather than reformulate their business operations, which could be seen in how many of them canceled their operations or events before the crisis had really taken hold. The “if we do not get paid, we'll cancel” logic was evident among these firms from the early stages of the pandemic. However, as the crisis developed a shift could be seen among all firms—but especially small ones—from going it alone to demanding public sector support ( Webster and Ivanov, 2016 ), something that the large firms claimed right from the start.

As for the public organizations, they first focused on identifying opportunities arising from the crisis for the sector as a whole rather than its individual firms. From the start they believed that tourism would fuel the sector and create new opportunities (such as the staycation) within it. Later, support came in the form of reducing financial burdens for firms across all sectors but following the logic of large firms (e.g., the reduction in taxes and the launching of loans). Thereafter, the public sector engaged in the refocusing of operations, promoting the idea of the crisis as an engine of entrepreneurship and talking about the future and the post-COVID situation. Education and competence development were seen as routes to the future, and the public sector thereby followed a logic that disregarded the crisis in the short term by focusing on the time after it, both in terms of talking about next year’s summer and the proposed educational initiatives rather than urgent and immediate interventions. In turn, this meant that those most desperately needing support would not receive it, and much of the support was indeed directed at large firms or even public organizations operating in the tourism sector.

To summarize, three types of conflicts of logic can be found: a time-based logic of operating in the present or the future, an entrepreneurship logic as a conflict between survival and change and an aggregation-level logic describing the conflict of seeing operations as individual firms or aggregates. These can be described as thematic logics . The public here represents the future, change and aggregation, while the private tourist companies describe the present, survival and individual firm logic. There is, though, a difference in the first type of logic between large and small firms: Large private firms acted as if the future were now (pre-acting), while small firms acted in the present, and support was directed at the future, reflecting the large-firm logic. The reason for the public sector acting for the future, change and the collective aggregate is rooted in the political scene with complex decision processes based on amalgamated statistics, along with a dialogue with large firms. Small private firms shifted in their logics as their operations were increasingly challenged, but they remained focused on keeping their operations afloat, often beyond financial sense.

If we relate the above to how Besharov and Smith (2014) describe how various logics may be present simultaneously as competing, co-existing, hybrid and a bricolage of logics, then we can see that various logics indeed exist simultaneously, but thus carry strong competing—or conflicting—components. Between the private and the public sectors, logics would be competing, with both parties trying to make their logic the dominant one: Private firms try to attract public sector support to fit their needs, while the public sector attempts to promote its opportunity, future-oriented logic to dominate everyone's view. The private tourism sector being quite heterogeneous (types of operations, sizes and geographical coverage) means that it, in turn, represents a bricolage of logics. The bricolage means that conflicts may appear for certain types of private firms and not for others, and there is the suggested partial bridging of logics between public sector initiatives and large, locally operating firms at the expense of small firms that depend on income from their high-season business activities.

This paper discusses and exemplifies the conflict of logics between private sector interests and public initiatives related to crisis management in tourism. The introduction asked: What conflicts of logic have emerged as the consequence of attempted crisis management? How can they be understood in terms of representations? As for the conflicts of logic, these are demonstrated as conflicts of time, conflicts between survival and change and conflicts of aggregation levels. The representations could partly be seen as an in-group logic (where tourism firms call for immediate intervention and measures to help individual firms survive) and an out-group logic (where the public sector considers the future of the whole sector without realizing the immediacy of the emergency for certain firms). Meanwhile, there is a difference between small and large firms with large firms acting as if the future were now while small firms act in the present where, as the situation deteriorates, their behaviors change over time.

Theoretical contributions

The main contribution of this paper is how it theorizes (cf. Van De Ven and Scott Pole, 1995 ) conflicting logics related to crisis management. More specifically, the paper introduces how conflicts of logic may be built up by multiple conflicting components with thematic logics as a new concept introduced to the literature, describing how logics are related to specific components defined by the situation. In the COVID-19 crisis, the themes represent a time-based logic of operating in the present or the future , an entrepreneurship logic as a conflict between survival and change , and an aggregation-level logic describing the conflict of seeing operations as individual firms or aggregates . For entrepreneurs there is also the conflict of “self” in terms of needing to rely on support, having previously based their operations on a “going it alone” logic. The breaking down of conflicts into components of conflicting logics per se (i.e., thematic logics as part of a field-level logic, Nigam and Ocasio, 2010 ), rather than the components identified here would constitute this paper's theoretical contribution.

Related to the special issue call, this paper shows that establishing precisely how COVID-19 affects tourism is a matter of perspective, where it is difficult not only to identify causes but also to rationalize how well-intentioned interventions may in fact exacerbate the crisis. While highlighting policy failures and the risk of diverting attention to the wrong cause, conflicts of logic indicate how the future itself conflicts with the present.

Managerial implications

This paper exposes an important issue related to crisis support, which has consequences for management of private tourism firms and public sector representatives. The identified conflicts of logic show that, while both private firms and public initiatives aim to diminish the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, they do not address or understand the same needs. Communication would be a key factor, where it is important that those responsible for supporting the firms (i.e., public initiatives) listen to the needs of private firms. In such communication, it would be important to include perspectives of both the present and the future, but where the future can never overshadow present needs for survival. Moreover, it would be important to address the passiveness of “giving up” and try to turn it into action plans. For managers, it would be important to emphasize their short-term issues and, for instance, establish interest groups to advocate their situation. As seen among many firms during the COVID-19 crisis, a solid financial foundation is essential to withstand the test of any crisis.

Ideas for further research

This paper opens up an opportunity for further research in theorizing crisis management in tourism ( Cohen and Cohen, 2012 ; Nasir et al. , 2020 ; Zenker and Kock, 2020 ). More precisely, the paper reaches beyond a purely descriptive account of a crisis and integrates it with a well-known perspective from organizational studies. Exploring further such integrations and elaborating on conflicting logics related to crises specifically may prove to be fruitful routes for future research. The conflict components identified in this paper could well be tested in contexts beyond tourism and crises, or at least contexts related to other tourism crises. The latter option may, like the present paper, entail newspaper and media reviews of previous crises and comparisons among various types of crises.

The COVID-19 crisis will likely attract further research interest. Regarding the conclusions this paper makes, it would be interesting to study crisis management in different geographical areas to identify and understand the range of interventions made to address the pandemic. It would also be interesting to follow the situation in Sweden to see whether management of the crisis changes over time and whether conflicting logics ultimately converge or continue to develop in opposing directions.

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What Is War Tourism?

When tourists deliberately visit nations that have been involved in a war, looking for evidence of the conflict, this is known as war tourism. There are examples of popular war tourist locations all over the world from Germany to the Far East. Although few of these nations showcase the effects of the war on their land, visitors still arrive expecting to find out more about tales of murder and torture. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most nations prefer to keep quiet about such events and focus on alternative attractions.

It is a mistake to think that war tourism involves the process of visiting countries who are currently involved in a brutal conflict. Aside from a number of journalists who cover wars and may jokingly refer to themselves as war tourists, there is no evidence that there is a substantial group of people who deliberately visit active war zones. Instead, war tourism is the practice of visiting a place that has been devastated by war many years after the conflict has ceased. War museums in these places are extremely popular locations for tourists of this nature.

There are dozens of examples of popular war tourism locations worldwide. Srebrenica is a place in Bosnia where more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were murdered in 1995 and is a popular war tourist location. Likewise, a number of visitors to Vietnam go to the famous National Defense Shooting Range and fire bullets from the AK-47s that helped the nation defeat the United States. Concentration camps in Germany, such as Auschwitz, which held hundreds of thousands of ill-fated Jewish prisoners, still attract thousands of tourists annually.

For these nations that are popular places for war tourism, the tourism is a means of making cash from the misery that was suffered during the conflicts. Many of these countries are still feeling the effects of a recent war and want to reinvigorate their faltering economies. El Salvador is said to be the first country to make war tourism a business in attempting to profit from its long Civil War which took place between 1980 and 1992.

There are some areas that are still considered too dangerous to attract war tourists. Examples of these countries are Pakistan and Afghanistan. Some nations that attract this form of tourism prefer to bring tourists away from areas where blood was shed to more peaceful sights. These countries want to distance themselves from the violent past.

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• By: Patryk Kosmider Thousands of tourists still visit Nazi concentration camps.
• By: USMC Archives When people deliberately visit places that have been involved in a war, it is known as war tourism.
• By: Andrey Zyk Vietnam attracts war tourists annually.
• By: Donnie Nunley Civil War reenactors are a regular part of tourist attractions near Gettysburg and other Civil War battle sites.
• By: Jetpics Equipment used by famed German World War I pilot Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, also known as the Red Baron, is on display in museums in England and Australia.

• Tourismembassy /
• Tourismembassy Blog /
• Tourism industry /

Impacts of war conflicts in the tourism industry

20/09/2013 15:03

Source: Tourismembassy

Category: 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.

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Middle East Crisis Israel Appears to Soften Stance in Cease-Fire Talks

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• Destroyed buildings in Rafah on Monday. Associated Press
• Relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages protest in Tel Aviv on Monday. Ohad Zwigenberg/Associated Press
• Palestinians flee after a strike in Nuseirat in central Gaza. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
• Mourning relatives killed overnight in Rafah. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
• Looking at a damaged building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday. Hatem Khaled/Reuters
• Posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages in Tel Aviv. Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
• A Palm Sunday service at a Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
• Children at a makeshift movie theater set up among the tents in Rafah on Sunday. Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock
• Israeli soldiers resting outside the border with southern Gaza. Amir Cohen/Reuters

Israel is open to a truce involving an initial release of 33 hostages, officials say.

Israel’s latest offer would accept fewer hostages to be freed during the first phase of a new truce in Gaza, according to three Israeli officials, offering a hint of hope for cease-fire negotiations that could restart as soon as Tuesday.

For months, Israel had demanded that Hamas release at least 40 hostages — women, older people and those who are seriously ill — in order to secure a new truce. Now the Israeli government is prepared to settle for only 33, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss the sensitive matter.

The change was prompted partly by the fact that Israel now believes that some of the 40 have died in captivity , according to one of the officials.

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said at the World Economic Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Monday that Israel had made an “extraordinarily generous” offer and that Hamas alone stood in the way of a deal. David Cameron, the British foreign minister, said at the same conference that the offer included a sustained 40-day cease-fire and the release of potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the Israeli hostages.

Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, said at the conference that he was “hopeful” about the latest cease-fire proposal, but did not say what it involved or who had proposed it.

“The proposal has taken into account the positions of both sides,” Mr. Shoukry said, adding that “we are waiting to have a final decision.”

The shift has raised expectations that Hamas and Israel might be edging closer to sealing their first truce since a weeklong cease-fire in November, when Hamas released 105 captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners. A senior Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, said on social media on Monday that Hamas was studying a new Israeli proposal, but did not say what the proposal was.

Hamas and its allies captured roughly 240 Israelis and foreigners in their attack on Oct. 7, which prompted Israel to go to war in Gaza. More than 130 hostages are believed to still be held in Gaza, but some are thought to have died.

Negotiations over a new pause, mediated by Egypt and Qatar, have stalled for months over disagreements about the number of hostages and prisoners who should be exchanged in a future deal. Another obstacle has been whether Israel would allow civilians from northern Gaza who fled the Israeli invasion to return to their homes, and how many would be permitted to do so.

The length of a cease-fire has also been a key stumbling block. Hamas wants it to be permanent, while Israel wants another temporary pause so that it could still send troops into Rafah, the last major Gazan city under Hamas control, though one where more than a million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. Far-right members of Israel’s governing coalition have threatened to bring down Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government if the war ends without Hamas’s total defeat.

A mid-ranking Israeli delegation is planning to fly to Cairo on Tuesday to restart talks mediated by Egypt, but only if Hamas also agrees to attend, according to two of the Israeli officials. A senior Hamas official said that a delegation was already in Cairo on Monday.

At the economic forum in Saudi Arabia, Mr. Cameron, the British foreign secretary, said something else must happen for the conflict to end: “The people responsible for Oct. 7, the Hamas leadership, would have to leave Gaza.”

Vivian Nereim and Edward Wong contributed reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

— Patrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgon reporting from Jerusalem

Biden speaks to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar to press for Hamas’s agreement on a new cease-fire.

President Biden spoke on Monday with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar as he sought to increase pressure on Hamas to accept a deal that would result in a temporary cease-fire in the war in Gaza and the release of some of the hostages held there.

According to a statement from the office of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, he and Mr. Biden discussed the negotiations and Egypt’s efforts to broker a cease-fire. They also reiterated their support for a two-state solution, discussed the importance of containing the conflict to the region and emphasized their opposition to a military escalation in the city of Rafah in southern Gaza, which Israel seems poised to invade.

Mr. Biden also spoke on Monday with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, the emir of Qatar. According to the White House, Mr. Biden urged the Qatari leader “to exert all efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas,” saying that “this is now the only obstacle” to an immediate cease-fire.

Mr. al-Sisi and Mr. al-Thani have been prime intermediaries with Hamas through months of fitful negotiations to reach a deal to halt the hostilities, and Mr. Biden hopes they will prod the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, to accept the U.S.-brokered proposal on the table. On Sunday, Mr. Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, expressed a hopeful view of the prospects for an agreement. “In recent days, there has been progress in talks,” she told reporters at the White House.

Like other American officials, Ms. Jean-Pierre said that Hamas, not Israel, was the obstacle to an agreement.

“The onus is indeed on Hamas,” she said. “There is a deal on the table, and they need to take it.”

— Peter Baker reporting from Washington

Blinken meets with Arab officials to discuss Gaza and postwar plans.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with Arab officials on Monday in Saudi Arabia about the war between Israel and Hamas and the difficult issues it has created, from humanitarian aid to hostages. Mr. Blinken plans to travel to Jordan and Israel on Tuesday.

After landing in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, shortly after dawn, Mr. Blinken met with Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and then with foreign ministers and a top foreign policy adviser from five other Arab nations in the Persian Gulf that, along with Saudi Arabia, form the Gulf Cooperation Council. Prince Faisal was also part of that second meeting. On Monday night Mr. Blinken met with Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.

The State Department listed the cease-fire and hostage issues first in the summary it released of Mr. Blinken’s one-on-one meeting with the prince. The two “discussed ongoing efforts to reach an immediate cease-fire in Gaza that would secure the release of hostages held by Hamas,” the department said.

The two diplomats also talked about greater regional integration and “a pathway to a Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel,” the summary said. That was a reference to negotiations over a broad deal that would involve the United States, Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestinian representatives agreeing to terms that would result in the creation of a Palestinian state and greater diplomatic recognition for Israel in the region.

Mr. Blinken planned to meet with Arab and European officials in a group later on Monday to talk about plans for rebuilding Gaza, even though Israel is still carrying out its war there and has not stepped back from its difficult — and perhaps impossible — goal of fully eradicating Hamas.

Saudi Arabia is hosting a three-day meeting of the World Economic Forum, and top Arab officials, including Mr. Blinken’s diplomatic counterparts, are attending the event in Riyadh. The gathering includes senior ministers from Qatar and Egypt, the two Arab mediators in multiple rounds of talks over a potential cease-fire between Israel and Hamas .

“The quickest way to bring this to an end is to get to a cease-fire and the release of hostages,” Mr. Blinken said in an onstage talk with Borge Brende, president of the World Economic Forum. “Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel. And at the moment, the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas.”

“I’m hopeful they will make the right decision and we can have a fundamental change in the dynamic,” he added.

Mr. Blinken and other top aides of President Biden have also been trying to push for a long-term political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is where the broader deal comes in. In a call meant to pave the way for Mr. Blinken’s trip, his seventh to the region since the war began, Mr. Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke by phone on Sunday afternoon for nearly an hour.

The two leaders discussed “increases in the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza,” according to a White House statement released after the call, and Mr. Biden repeated his warning against an Israeli ground assault on Rafah in southern Gaza. He also reviewed with Mr. Netanyahu the negotiations over a hostage release.

In their best-case scenario, the Biden administration envisions Saudi Arabia and perhaps a few other Arab nations agreeing to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel. In exchange, Saudi Arabia would receive advanced weapons and security guarantees, including a mutual defense treaty , from the United States and a commitment for U.S. cooperation on a civilian nuclear program in the kingdom .

For its part, Israel would have to commit to a concrete pathway to the founding of a Palestinian nation, with specific deadlines, U.S. and Saudi officials say.

“I think it’s clear that in the absence of a real political horizon for the Palestinians, it’s going to be much harder, if not impossible, to really have a coherent plan for Gaza itself,” Mr. Blinken said at the public talk on Monday.

Prince Faisal said Sunday that Saudi officials hoped to discuss concrete steps toward creating a Palestinian state during Mr. Blinken’s visit to Riyadh. Calling the war and humanitarian crisis in Gaza “a complete failing of the existing political system,” he told a news conference that the kingdom’s government believes that the only solution is “a credible, irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.”

Before the war started last October, U.S. and Saudi officials were in intense discussions to reach an agreement on the terms of such a proposal. For those negotiators, a big question at the time was what Israel would agree to. Since the war began, the Americans and the Saudis have publicly insisted that Israel must agree to the existence of a Palestinian state.

But Israeli leaders and ordinary citizens have become even more resistant to that idea since the Oct. 7 attacks, in which the Israeli authorities say that Hamas and allied gunmen killed about 1,200 people and took about 240 people as hostages. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, including thousands of children, say officials from the Gaza health ministry.

Vivian Nereim and Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

— Edward Wong traveling with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken

Deadly Israeli strikes hit residential buildings in Rafah, Palestinian news media say.

Deadly Israeli airstrikes flattened concrete buildings overnight in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah, according to news agencies, which published video on Monday of rows of body bags containing what Palestinian officials said were victims of the strikes.

The Reuters news agency said the strikes in Rafah, which Israel seems poised to invade , killed 20 people. The Palestinian news media said the death toll was at least 24. The Gaza Ministry of Health said 34 people were killed in the Gaza Strip during the previous 24 hours, but it did not specify how many of them were killed by the strikes in Rafah.

Asked for comment on the strikes, the Israeli military issued a statement on Monday saying that its “fighter jets struck terror targets where terrorists were operating within a civilian area in southern Gaza.”

More than one million Gazans have been crowding into shelters and tents in Rafah to seek safety from almost seven months of Israel’s military offensive. Israeli officials have said they will soon send ground troops into Rafah, the last Gazan city Israel has not invaded, in order to eliminate Hamas battalions there, an operation that the Biden administration has warned against because of the risk to civilians.

Palestine TV — a channel backed by the Palestinian Authority, which administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank — said the strikes had hit residential buildings in Rafah. One survivor, carrying a baby she said had been pulled from the rubble, spoke to a Reuters video journalist.

“The entire world is seeing what’s happening to us,” the woman, Umm Fayez Abu Taha, said. She said the child appeared to be uninjured, but that her parents had been killed.

“Look at us with some compassion, with some humanity,” Ms. Abu Taha continued. “This is all we ask for, we’re not asking for much just end the war, nothing more.”

— Liam Stack reporting from Jerusalem

Hamas fires a barrage of rockets into Israel from Lebanon.

Hamas’s military wing said on Monday that it had launched a salvo of rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel, an apparent attempt by the group to signal that it is still capable of striking within Israel’s borders even as it studies the latest proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza.

The Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing, said in a statement that it had targeted an Israeli military position in Kiryat Shmona, the largest city in Israel’s far north, with a “concentrated rocket barrage” from southern Lebanon. The Israeli military said in a statement that most of the roughly 20 launches that crossed the border had been intercepted, and that it had responded by striking the source of fire. There were no injuries or damage, the military said.

Though Hamas is based in Gaza, many of its leaders are exiled in Lebanon , where the group has a sizable presence and operates largely out of Palestinian refugee camps. Since the Hamas-led terror attack on Oct. 7 prompted Israel to go to war in Gaza, Hamas has occasionally launched rocket attacks into northern Israel from within Lebanon’s borders, though its ally Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, has launched far more. Both groups are backed by Iran. Israel has also targeted Hamas figures in Lebanon in deadly strikes.

Walid al Kilani, Hamas’s spokesman in Lebanon, said the attack was “the minimum duty” given Israel’s continued attacks in Gaza. “We know that Hezbollah is doing its duty and more, but the battlefield requires everyone to participate,” Mr. Kilani said.

The launches on Monday, although muted in their impact, highlighted Hamas’s continuing ability to threaten Israel with rocket fire despite more than 200 days of a devastating Israeli air and ground offensive that has decimated the group’s military capabilities in Gaza.

Mohanad Hage Ali, a Beirut-based fellow with the Carnegie Middle East Center, said the attack was likely an attempt by Hamas to signal that it was “still part of the fight.” While it was largely symbolic, it could also be a means to apply pressure amid the Gaza cease-fire negotiations, he said.

Data compiled by the online website Rocket Alert — which tracks warnings of rocket launches using Israeli military figures — shows that there were just 37 alerts in April in response to detected rocket fire from Gaza, compared to around 7,300 in October at the onset of the war. More than six months into the conflict, the data shows a significant drop-off in the number of warnings of rockets from Gaza.

Alerts indicating rocket fire from Lebanon, however, have remained largely steady, the data shows. Most of those are launched by Hezbollah, but Hamas continues to launch attacks from Lebanon with Hezbollah’s blessing.

Amin Hoteit, a military analyst and former brigadier general in the Lebanese army, said the latest attack was a sign of the “integrated front of operations” among Hamas, Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups in the region .

Hwaida Saad and Jonathan Rosen contributed reporting.

— Euan Ward reporting from Beirut, Lebanon

Israeli officials believe the International Criminal Court is preparing arrest warrants over the war.

Israeli officials increasingly believe that the International Criminal Court is preparing to issue arrest warrants for senior government officials on charges related to the conflict with Hamas, according to five Israeli and foreign officials.

The Israeli and foreign officials also believe the court is weighing arrest warrants for leaders from Hamas.

If the court proceeds, the Israeli officials could potentially be accused of preventing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip and pursuing an excessively harsh response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, according to two of the five officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.

The Israeli officials, who are worried about the potential fallout from such a case, said they believe that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is among those who might be named in a warrant. It is not clear who might be charged from Hamas or what crimes would be cited.

The Israeli officials did not disclose the nature of the information that led them to be concerned about potential I.C.C. action, and the court did not comment on the matter.

Arrest warrants from the court would probably be seen in much of the world as a humbling moral rebuke, particularly to Israel, which for months has faced international backlash over its conduct in Gaza, including from President Biden , who called it “over the top.”

It could also affect Israel’s policies as the country presses its military campaign against Hamas. One of the Israeli officials said that the possibility of the court issuing arrest warrants had informed Israeli decision-making in recent weeks.

The Israeli and foreign officials said they didn’t know what stage the process was in. Any warrants would require approval from a panel of judges and would not necessarily result in a trial or even the targets’ immediate arrest.

Karim Khan, the court’s chief prosecutor, has previously confirmed that his team is investigating incidents during the war, but his office declined to comment for this article, saying that it does not “respond to speculation in media reports.”

Mr. Netanyahu’s office also would not comment, but on Friday the prime minister said on social media that any intervention by the I.C.C. “would set a dangerous precedent that threatens the soldiers and officials of all democracies fighting savage terrorism and wanton aggression.”

Mr. Netanyahu did not explain what prompted his statement, though he may have been responding to speculation about the arrest warrants in the Israeli press.

He also said: “Under my leadership, Israel will never accept any attempt by the ICC to undermine its inherent right of self-defense. The threat to seize the soldiers and officials of the Middle East’s only democracy and the world’s only Jewish state is outrageous. We will not bow to it.”

Based in The Hague, the I.C.C. is the world’s only permanent international court with the power to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. The court has no police force of its own. Instead, it relies on its 124 members , which include most European countries but not Israel or the United States, to arrest those named in warrants. It cannot try defendants in absentia .

But warrants from the court can pose obstacles to travel for officials named in them.

The Hamas-led raid last October led to the killing of roughly 1,200 people in Israel and the abductions of some 250 others, according to Israeli officials. The subsequent war in Gaza, including heavy Israeli bombardment, has killed more than 34,000 people, according to Gazan officials, caused widespread damage to housing and infrastructure, and brought the territory to the brink of famine.

The Israeli assault in Gaza has led the International Court of Justice, a separate court in The Hague, to hear accusations of genocide against the Israeli state and has spurred a wave of protests on college campuses in the United States.

If the I.C.C. does issue arrest warrants, they would come with deep stigmatization, placing those named in them in the same category as foreign leaders like Omar al-Bashir, the deposed president of Sudan, and Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian president, who was the subject of a warrant last year tied to his war against Ukraine.

The I.C.C.’s focus on individuals rather than states differentiates it from the International Court of Justice, which settles disputes between states.

The I.C.C. judges have ruled that the court has jurisdiction over Gaza and the West Bank because the Palestinians have joined the court as the State of Palestine.

Mr. Khan has said that his team will be investigating incidents that have occurred since Oct. 7 and that he will be “impartially looking at the evidence and vindicating the rights of victims whether they are in Israel or Palestine.”

Mr. Khan’s office has also been investigating allegations of war crimes committed during the 2014 war between Israel and Hamas; one of the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity believes the new arrest warrants would be an extension of that investigation.

Hamas and the Israeli military did not respond to requests for comment. The office of Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister, declined to comment.

In general, Israeli officials say that they fight according to the laws of war and that they take significant steps to protect civilians, accusing Hamas of hiding inside civilian areas and forcing Israel to pursue them there. Hamas has denied committing atrocities on Oct. 7, saying — despite video evidence to the contrary — that its fighters tried to avoid harming civilians.

Marlise Simons , Gabby Sobelman and Myra Noveck contributed reporting.

— Ronen Bergman and Patrick Kingsley The reporters spoke to Israeli and foreign officials.

World Central Kitchen plans to resume working in Gaza.

World Central Kitchen said on Sunday that it would resume operations in Gaza with a local team of Palestinian aid workers, nearly a month after the Israeli military killed seven of the organization’s workers in targeted drone strikes on their convoy.

Israeli military officials have said the attack was a “grave mistake” and cited a series of failures , including a breakdown in communication and violations of the military’s operating procedures.

The Washington-based aid group said that it was still calling for an independent, international investigation into the April 1 attack and that it had received “no concrete assurances” that the Israeli military’s operational procedures had changed. But the “humanitarian situation in Gaza remains dire,” the aid group’s chief operating officer, Erin Gore, said in a statement .

“We are restarting our operation with the same energy, dignity, and focus on feeding as many people as possible,” she said.

The aid group said it had distributed more than 43 million meals in Gaza so far and that it had trucks carrying the equivalent of nearly eight million meals waiting to enter the enclave through the Rafah crossing in the south. World Central Kitchen said it was also planning to send trucks to Gaza through Jordan and that it would open a kitchen in Al-Mawasi, a small seaside village that the Israeli military has designated as a “humanitarian zone” safe for civilians, though attacks there have continued.

Six of the seven workers killed on April 1 were from Western nations — three from Britain, one from Australia, one from Poland and one with dual citizenship of the United States and Canada. The seventh was Palestinian. They were killed in back-to-back Israeli drone strikes on their vehicles as they traveled toward Rafah after unloading food aid that had arrived by sea.

The attack prompted World Central Kitchen to immediately suspend its operations in Gaza and elicited outrage from some of Israel’s closest allies.

The World Central Kitchen convoy’s movements had been coordinated in advance with the Israeli military, but some officers had not reviewed the coordination documentation detailing which cars were part of the convoy, the military said.

Some 200 aid workers, most of them Palestinians, were killed in Gaza between Oct. 7 and the attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy, according to the United Nations. A visual investigation by The New York Times showed that, well before the World Central Kitchen attack, six aid groups in Gaza had come under Israeli fire despite sharing their locations with the Israeli military.

The episode forced World Central Kitchen to decide between ending its efforts in Gaza or continuing, “knowing that aid, aid workers and civilians are being intimidated and killed,” Ms. Gore said in the statement.

“Ultimately, we decided that we must keep feeding, continuing our mission of showing up to provide food to people during the toughest of times,” she said.

At a memorial in Washington for the World Central Kitchen workers on Thursday, the group’s founder, the celebrity chef José Andrés, said that there were “many unanswered questions about what happened and why,” and that the aid group was still demanding an independent investigation into the Israeli military’s actions.

The seven aid workers had “risked everything to feed people they did not know and will never meet,” Mr. Andrés said. “They were the best of humanity.”

— Anushka Patil

Arab ministers suggest ways to ‘force peace’ amid Israel’s refusal to recognize a Palestinian state.

At a conference in Saudi Arabia’s capital on Monday, senior diplomats from around the world appeared to agree on one thing: The pathway to a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the creation of a Palestinian state.

But with Israel’s refusal to recognize a Palestinian state, three Arab foreign ministers posited how best to proceed, with Ayman Safadi of Jordan presenting the bluntest proposal among them. The international community, he said, should find a way to “force peace” against the will of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

“If we come up with the best plan ever, and all of us in the international community agree that this is the plan to go forward, and then Netanyahu and his government say no, what happens then?” Mr. Safadi said during a World Economic Forum panel discussion in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, with the foreign ministers of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. “Will he face consequences?”

He added, “The party that is responsible for denying Palestinians, Israelis and the whole region peace must be held accountable.”

Israel’s foreign ministry declined to comment, and the prime minister’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Both before and during this war in Gaza, which began after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Mr. Netanyahu has rebuffed calls for the creation of a Palestinian state.

Analysts say that the attack, in which about 1,200 people were killed and about 240 people taken captive, according to the Israeli authorities, has made it even more unlikely that the Israeli government would agree to such a path. Israeli officials have said that they are trying to eradicate Hamas.

“There is a contrary move, an attempt to force, ram down our throats, a Palestinian state, which will be another terror haven,” Mr. Netanyahu said this month.

Polling shows that a majority of Israelis oppose creating a Palestinian state.

In the Biden administration’s plan for resolving the underlying conflict — and end a war in which Israel’s military has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to officials from the Gazan Health Ministry — it envisions Saudi Arabia agreeing to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel.

In exchange, Saudi Arabia would receive advanced weapons and security guarantees, including a mutual defense treaty from the United States and U.S. commitment for cooperation on a civilian nuclear program in the kingdom .

For its part, Israel would have to commit to the founding of a Palestinian nation, with specific deadlines, U.S. and Saudi officials say.

“In the absence of a real political horizon for the Palestinians, it’s going to be much harder, if not impossible, to really have a coherent plan for Gaza itself,” Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said on Monday during the conference in Riyadh.

On Sunday at the same event, the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said that the only solution was “a credible, irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state.”

He added, “We need to move from talk to action, to concrete steps, and it can’t be left up to the warring parties.”

Prince Faisal implied that diplomats could maneuver around an Israeli refusal, referring to “mechanisms within the toolbox of the international community that can overcome the resistance of any party.”

“If we make that decision, the pathway will unfold before us, even if there are those that will try to stop it,” he said. “There are levers clear, there are levers hidden, that can push us in that direction.”

Mr. Safadi, the Jordanian foreign minister, said that the challenge Arab states had faced while trying to resolve the conflict was that “we don’t have a partner in Israel now.”

“Do we allow Netanyahu to doom the future of the region to more conflict, war and destruction — or do we do what it takes to force peace?” he said.

Speaking on the same panel, Sameh Shoukry, Egypt’s foreign minister, said that if the international community made a “categorical” commitment to creating a Palestinian state, there were “points of leverage that can fulfill that requirement.”

“We have the mechanisms, but is there the political will to utilize it?” he asked.

— Vivian Nereim reporting from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

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Conflict Resolution Strategies for the Hospitality Industry

Can you feel it?  It’s that feeling of excitement and positivity as everyone breathes a sigh of relief from the last year and a half and we all start to slowly return back to normal.  It’s an especially exciting time for the hospitality industry as people return to dining out, traveling, hitting the spa, and all those things that help them enjoy life to the fullest. 

COVID-19 has caused the hospitality industry to rethink the guest experience and while guests’ safety and experience is a top priority in the decision-making process, these changes can be challenging for all to understand and accept.

The good news is, with a little preparation and training, you and your team can be well-equipped to tackle the conflicts that may arise from concerned guests.

 Prepare for how customers may respond to change:

• Not everyone will be happy about the changes.
• Guests will question policies and procedures.
• Some customers may be confrontational.

But, before the above makes you anxious about getting back to business, don’t worry.  The best way to prepare for potential customer conflicts is to predict what that conflict might be and prepare your team to respond. Communication is very important, the earlier and clearer your messaging can be, the more likely you are to have happy guests who are accepting of your changes.

Through your website, social media, email blasts, and other forms of outward-bound communication, inform your guests ahead of time of any changes to policy that may affect their visit.  The messages should be informative, positive, and consistent throughout your entire organization.  Anything they read about your policy should be the same message they hear from your team.  Mixed messages can lead to confusion and difficult guest interactions.

Providing a guest experience is much like a performance, so remember to prepare and practice.  Prepare for any potential conflicts by reviewing your new policies as a team and anticipate any questions and concerns that may arise.  Then, build a “toolbox” of ideas and solutions you can offer guests who are struggling with the changes.  Finally, practice answering questions and addressing concerns with your team.  Think role play!  Don’t forget to also evaluate the solutions you’ve prepared and look to continue to improve how you address and solve customer issues.

Now you’re ready to face your “audience,” your guests!  Be on the lookout for signs that someone is upset. There might be nonverbal cues like a clenched fist or jaw, puffed-out chest, or heightened animation. You may also witness the more obvious signs like a raised voice or foul language. 

De-escalate the situation professionally and consistently by introducing yourself, remaining calm, listening closely (allow them the time they need to get it all off their chest), and reassuring your guest that you understand their concern and will work to find a solution that is acceptable to all parties.  In fact, it can be helpful to repeat the problem back to them to make sure you do understand their issue correctly.

Always be professional, courteous, maintain eye contact, and most importantly DO NOT lower your interactions to that of your frustrated guest.  Set the example for them.  If you are calm, they should start to calm down.

Remember that toolbox of solutions we suggested you prepare?  Here’s when you use it.  Explain the thought behind the changes and that they are designed to provide a safe and enjoyable experience.  If your guest is still upset, offer an alternative solution that will help make them more comfortable and give them space and time to decide.  The goal should be to agree on an acceptable solution.

Sometimes the conflict can be between guests.  When this happens, monitor the situation and intervene if you feel they won’t solve the situation on their own.  Remember to stay neutral and essentially follow all the steps outlined above.

Despite your best efforts, there will be times that not all situations can be resolved.  Just be sure you can fully explain the rules and regulations and offer solutions to the extent of your empowerment, but not beyond.   And, if the situation becomes escalated, or you feel you can’t reach a solution, make sure to clearly articulate your company’s policy on refusing service and refunds if required.  Most importantly, trust your instincts and be mindful of your personal boundaries and safety.

Download SBDC's Summer 2021 Hospitality Conflict Resolution Checklist

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Israeli war cabinet resumes hostage deal discussions, official says

A delegation from Egypt traveled to Israel on Friday in a bid to avert a planned Israeli offensive in Rafah , where much of Gaza’s population has been displaced, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the matter’s sensitivity. The trip, which follows an Israeli war cabinet meeting Thursday to discuss hostage deal negotiations, signals a resumption of efforts to broker a deal after months of failed talks . National security adviser Jake Sullivan told MSNBC on Friday that there was “new momentum, new life,” to the hostage and cease-fire talks.

• No U.S. decision yet on withholding assistance from key Israeli military unit, say sources
• Mortar attack on Gaza coast spotlights risk to U.S. pier mission
• More arrests and a canceled commencement as college antiwar rallies spread

Here's what to know:

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• Six months of the Israel-Gaza war: A timeline of key moments April 7, 2024 Six months of the Israel-Gaza war: A timeline of key moments April 7, 2024
• Colombia is the latest and largest country to sever ties with Israel May 1, 2024 Colombia is the latest and largest country to sever ties with Israel May 1, 2024
• Hamas touts ‘positive spirit’ in cease-fire talks, will travel to Cairo May 2, 2024 Hamas touts ‘positive spirit’ in cease-fire talks, will travel to Cairo May 2, 2024

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Israel-Gaza war

The Israel-Gaza war has gone on for six months, and tensions have spilled into the surrounding region .

The war: On Oct. 7, Hamas militants launched an unprecedented cross-border attack on Israel that included the taking of civilian hostages at a music festival . (See photos and videos of how the deadly assault unfolded ). Israel declared war on Hamas in response, launching a ground invasion that fueled the biggest displacement in the region since Israel’s creation in 1948 .

Gaza crisis: In the Gaza Strip, Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars , killing tens of thousands and plunging at least half of the population into “ famine-like conditions. ” For months, Israel has resisted pressure from Western allies to allow more humanitarian aid into the enclave .

U.S. involvement: Despite tensions between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and some U.S. politicians , including President Biden, the United States supports Israel with weapons , funds aid packages , and has vetoed or abstained from the United Nations’ cease-fire resolutions.

History: The roots of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and mistrust are deep and complex, predating the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948 . Read more on the history of the Gaza Strip .

Causes of Conflict in Literature

This essay about conflict in literature highlights its essential role in shaping narratives and engaging readers. It explores internal and external conflicts, ranging from psychological dilemmas to societal struggles and battles with nature or fate. Through examples from classic and modern literature, it illustrates how conflict drives character development and narrative progression while inviting readers to reflect on their own lives and values. Conflict is depicted as the lifeblood of storytelling, infusing narratives with resonance, humanity, and enduring allure.

How it works

The essence of conflict in literature mirrors the spice in culinary endeavors—it infuses stories with their distinct flavor. Envision perusing a tome where all unfolds seamlessly; it would scarcely engage beyond the initial pages. It is the trials, tribulations, and confrontations that draw us into narratives, compelling us to traverse their pages. Conflict serves as the pulse of storytelling, propelling characters to metamorphose and narratives to unfold. It is indispensable not solely for evoking intrigue but for mirroring the intricacies of reality, where conflict often looms unavoidably.

At its core, conflict entails a clash of divergent forces. This collision may transpire within the labyrinthine recesses of a character’s psyche, amid characters themselves, or amidst a character and the broader societal or natural forces. Each manifestation of conflict steers a narrative along distinct trajectories, delving into myriad facets of the human experience and societal frameworks.

Firstly, let us contemplate internal conflicts—those labyrinthine, convoluted skirmishes waged within a character’s inner sanctum. These skirmishes, often the most resonant and compelling, beckon us into the intimate confines of personal dilemmas and moral quandaries. Take, for instance, Hamlet in Shakespeare’s magnum opus. His vacillation and musings on morality, mortality, and vengeance forge a profound psychological conflict that besieges his actions and ruminations throughout the play. Hamlet’s quandary extends beyond the mere decision to dispatch his uncle; it delves into the moral implications of retribution and his position in a world steeped in corruption. This internal strife renders Hamlet an enduring figure, as it resonates with the ubiquitous human endeavor of grappling with one’s conscience.

External conflicts, conversely, pit characters against obstacles external to themselves. These may be categorized into several archetypes: man versus man, man versus society, man versus nature, and man versus fate. Each archetype serves to elucidate diverse facets of the human condition.

In conflicts of man versus man, characters confront each other, oft engendering a discernible protagonist and antagonist. This classical conflict, rife with tension, propels thrillers and mysteries. Consider Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty, whose cerebral duel engenders a riveting narrative of virtue contending against vice. Such conflicts propel the plot forward, ensnaring our attention, and leaving us in suspense as to the eventual victor.

Man versus society conflict delves into a character’s resistance against societal norms or strictures. In George Orwell’s “1984,” Winston Smith wages war against a totalitarian regime that stifles free thought and imposes its warped reality upon its denizens. This conflict explores themes of liberty, coercion, and insurrection, prompting reflection on the value of personal freedoms and the perils of despotism.

Man versus nature constitutes another prevalent theme, particularly in survival narratives. In Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” the protagonist, Santiago, grapples with a colossal marlin in the Gulf Stream. The conflict transcends mere piscine combat, embodying themes of human endurance, the struggle against aging, and the battle against the capricious forces of nature. Santiago’s odyssey is both corporeal and existential, emblematic of humanity’s resilience in the face of insurmountable odds.

Lastly, man versus fate often underpins conflicts wherein characters contend with their predestined lot. In Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex,” for instance, Oedipus endeavors to circumvent a prophecy foretold prior to his birth—he endeavors to defy a destiny deemed untenable. This conflict engenders contemplation on the dichotomy of free will versus predestination, inviting speculation on the prospect of altering one’s destiny.

These conflicts are not merely conduits for tension and drama; they are inextricably intertwined with character development. Through these struggles, characters are tested, catalyzing their evolution. Conflict compels characters to make arduous choices, confront their fears, or reassess their perspectives, thereby propelling the narrative forward.

Furthermore, conflict serves as a conduit between literature and its audience, bridging the chasm between the fictive and the tangible. It affords us the opportunity to explore our own responses to analogous trials, be they internal dilemmas concerning morality or external clashes with societal vicissitudes. Through literary conflicts, we scrutinize the intricacies of our own lives, contemplate our values, and entertain diverse modes of existence.

In essence, sans conflict, narratives would lack resonance; they would fail to encapsulate the veritable essence of human existence, replete with strife, transformation, and maturation. Whether it is Hamlet’s existential turmoil, Winston’s insurrection against tyranny, Santiago’s skirmish with the sea, or Oedipus’s tragic defiance of fate, conflict imparts narratives with allure and, ultimately, with humanity.

Remember, while this treatise serves as a catalyst for introspection and exploration of conflict’s role in literature, a deeper comprehension of specific texts may be gleaned with the aid of professionals adept at elucidating the nuances of literary analysis. For personalized guidance and assurance that your essay meets scholarly standards, consider enlisting the services of professionals at EduBirdie .

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Office of the Vice President for Research

Traveling abroad for presentations or research this summer.

The University of Iowa is committed to engaging in research with collaborators from around the globe, working together to foster scholarship, develop new projects and research, and serve the public.   

“At the same time, it is important to safeguard intellectual property and institutional data, and to be aware of sponsor requirements and federal regulations,” said Mike Andrews, director of research integrity and security. “There are several institutional and federal regulations that researchers may not be aware of that are important to consider prior to leaving on a research trip abroad."  

Researchers at the University of Iowa have access to a wide range of resources available to support international collaboration. From travel insurance and laptop rentals, to assistance understanding federal sponsor requirements and export control regulations, UI staff are available to help prior to the initiation of a trip or collaboration.   

The Division of Sponsored Programs hosts an extensive website with resources and applicable policy information.   

 1. Review policies on travel and travel insurance   

Institutional policies  

In order for the institution to be informed of, and support researchers and scholars who are traveling internationally for research and scholarship, travelers must request pre-approval prior to university-sponsored travel. The pre-approval process in ProTrav, which routes to a traveler’s supervisor, ensures that the travel is approved and meets institutional requirements.   

The university provides travel insurance for university-sponsored travel to international locations only if the ProTrav trip request is approved in advance of the departure date. Read more about the UI travel policy.  

Sponsor policies  

In addition to requesting institutional approval, researchers must also request pre-approval from a sponsor if the travel is associated with a sponsored project.  Obtaining institutional approval via ProTrav does not constitute sponsor approval.  Since specific foreign travel approval requirements vary by sponsor, travelers should contact the Division of Sponsored Programs with questions about requesting prior approval.  

2. Disclose working with a foreign entity   

The U.S. government is engaged in a multifaceted effort to raise awareness of the potential for foreign influence on research, intellectual property, and associated technology implementation. To ensure that external activities are conducted in a manner consistent with institutional and public values, policies have been established to ensure that university employees avoid improper conflicts, and otherwise disclose activities for review and management.  

Institutional policies   

The university requires all researchers to disclose activities with foreign governments and institutions of higher education, such as presenting, teaching or conducting research external to university research activities. These disclosures should also include any form of payments, stipends, personal reimbursed travel, honoraria, and remunerations.  

The Conflict of Interest in Research Office can assist with any questions you have about what must be disclosed for research disclosure purposes. Although not exhaustive, a sample list of activities and external interests to disclose is posted on its website.   

Disclosing external research collaborations is also subject to conflict of commitment policies . Contact the Office of the Provost for more information on conflict of commitment disclosures.   

Activities under all conflict of interest and commitment policies must be disclosed to the institution through the eCOI platform .   

In addition, most federal sponsors require disclosure of other support or related activities with foreign governments and other organizations. For additional information about the information that must be disclosed to federal funding agencies, please review the Division of Sponsored Programs’ website or contact the Division of Sponsored Programs with questions.   

3. Protect university devices and data  

ITS hosts a webpage of best practices and things to consider prior to leaving campus on university-related business with personal or university owned equipment, with detailed checklists of considerations for both hardware and software. An important rule of thumb is to not travel with any devices or data you cannot replace or would not want to lose.  

ITS also offers a laptop rental program for various purposes including travel. Authorized departmental purchasing requestors can reserve equipment online for pickup at the ITS offices in 2800 University Capitol Centre during normal business hours (Monday-Friday, 8-5 p.m.). Details about the process are available on the ITS’s laptop rental webpage .   

4. Consider export controls    

Export control regulations may apply to several aspects of international travel. Questions to consider prior to travel are:  

Destination: Are you traveling to a sanctioned country?  

People, institutions, and businesses you will interact with: Are they listed on a U.S. Government restricted list? The regulations prohibit engaging in transactions or providing services to entities and individuals who appear on U.S. Government restricted lists.  

Items you are carrying, both as part of your luggage or to share with a collaborator: Is it restricted for your destination or is a license required?  

Information/Technical Data on your devices: Is it export controlled?   

If you work with export-controlled items and/or technology, and/or have questions related to new travel, please contact an export control coordinator .  

General questions about research security may be directed to the Mike Andrews , director of research integrity and security in the Office of the Vice President for Research.   

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