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issue. In the final 'post-problem' stage the issue moves into 'a twilight realm
of lesser attention or spasmodic recurrences of interest' (Downs, 1972: 40).
Having gone through the cycle, the issue has a different relation to public
attention and there may be new institutions and/or programmes of policies
that were put in place to help solve the issue. It is interesting to note that
with improvements in technology, the public is no longer just in the local
area; there is a global public who can react to issues online through the inter-
net. Examining the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 in the US using
the issue-attention cycle, Hall (2002: 462) states that the media played a key
role. 'Not only is the media significant in terms of the images that sur-
round travel and specific destinations and which influence travel decision-
making but the media also has a substantial impact on the policy measures
which governments take with respect to tourists safety and security.'
Similarly Henderson (2003), examining the case of the Bali bombings in
2002, argues that tourism marketing and development agencies have a piv-
otal role in times of crisis and have to deal not only with the immediate
consequences but also need to decide on future objectives. There was intense
media coverage of the 2011 Great East earthquake in Japan with the resulting
tsunami and nuclear accident. However, within about three weeks it had
been largely displaced from the media by other events and in 2013 Tokyo was
awarded the 2020 Olympics.
It is certain that significant events can have a major impact on the tour-
ism industry. For example, McKercher (2004) notes that, during the 2003
SARS outbreak, the World Travel and Tourism Council estimated that
three million people lost their jobs in tourism across the affected regions of
China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Vietnam. In addition, the crisis resulted
in a loss of $20 billion in gross domestic product and tourism arrivals fell
by 70% across the rest of Asia, including in areas that were totally or largely
disease free. McKercher (2004) suggests that the SARS outbreak high-
lighted the need for integrated national and international tourism crises
recovery strategies. Faulkner (2001) developed a tourism disaster manage-
ment framework based on the following stages: pre-event, prodromal
(apparent disaster is evident), emergency, intermediate, long-term (recov-
ery) and resolution. The model includes disaster management responses as
well as management strategies.
As seen in Figure 14.1 there are significant global events/risks that can
influence tourism. Similar to the work of Smil (2008), the purpose here is not
to make predictions about the future of global events and their impact on
tourism, rather it is to understand the range of global issues/risk and their
implications for tourism. It is acknowledged that there has been a long tradi-
tion in the tourism literature to study the impacts of tourism; however, what
is suggested here is the use of international studies as a lens to understand
global events in the context of tourism. What follows next is an overview of
some of the main theories of international studies.
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