Tourism Activity, Terrorism and Political Instability within the Commonwealth: The cases of Fiji and Kenya

This paper discusses the effects of terrorism and political unrest on the level of tourism activities in two developing countries that are a part of the Commonwealth, Kenya and Fiji. The paper explores the nature of the attacks and their impacts on the case studies in terms of the effects on the number of tourism arrivals and the volume of receipts. The responses of the governments, the media and the international communities are also examined to see if there are any guidelines to the likely magnitude and duration of the effects. The selection of case studies was limited to developing countries that are also members of the Commonwealth and which have had severe political instability or cases of terrorist attacks, or both. In so doing the paper observes the relationship that exists between the changes in arrivals and the changes in tourism receipts as a result of the occurrence of political/terrorist events. Comparisons are made between the effects on arrivals and receipts and the attempted recovery of both destinations. Although there is some commonality found in the results, the evidence of such a strong stable relationship is by no means conclusive. However, the results do suggest that political events such as a coup and internal political problems have far more severe impacts on the level of tourism activity than a low-to-medium, one-off terrorist attack. Copyright (C) 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.