Tourism, Development and International Studies - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 425

(Burma) raised human rights concerns with various groups advocating boy-
cotting travelling to and investing in the country (Hudson, 2007). Recent lim-
ited reforms in the country have seen it emerge from isolation with the lifting
of non-military sanctions (BBC, 2013a) and there are signs that the foreign
tourism investors are interested in investing and the government of Norway
along with the Asian Development Bank provided $500 million for a Tourism
Master Plan in June 2013 (ADB, 2013). One sign of perceived stability in a
country is visitor numbers. However, protests that start about a specific issue
can quickly become more involved. In May 2013, in Turkey, protests erupted
over the development of parkland in the city of Istanbul and quickly became
a wider dispute over government policies and actions. In Brazil, also in May
2013, protests in Sao Paulo over the increase in bus fares by 10% grew into a
nationwide movement over better education, health care and transport
(BBC, 2013b). In 2014, the crisis in Ukraine has generated a great deal of
uncertainty, as has the ongoing crisis in Syria. These types of events can raise
concerns about safety for visitors not only to specific countries but also to
surrounding regions. Countries post travel advisories to countries if they feel
there is a danger or potential threat for their citizens who travel there. In the
case of The Gambia, however, Sharpley et al. (1996) raise the question whe-
ther official travel advice provides an opportunity for tourism to be a politi-
cal bargaining tool. In their edited volume, Butler and Suntikul (2010) explore
significant developments, including the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of
Apartheid and the break-up of the Soviet Union and their impacts on the
tourism industry. Politics and global issues can also be seen through the lens
of international alliances. As indicated above, tourism has been important as
a way to instigate or enlarge the scope of cooperative alliances between
nations, such as through ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations)
and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation
(UNESCO), while other international organisations like the UNWTO and
PATA (Pacific Area Travel Association), expressly focused on tourism, have
been active in lobbying individual countries and international organisations
(Richter, 1983).
Having examined selected global events and tourism in the contexts of a
variety of disciplines, it is important to note that international studies tries
to bring all of these together in examining global issues. Referring back to
Figure 14.1, those involved with the global risks study were asked to rate
selected global issues in terms of centres of gravity or the one risk they
thought was systematically the most important in that particular group
(economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological). The top
five centres of gravity included major systemic financial failure, failure of
climate change adaptation, global governance failure, water supply crisis
(societal) and critical systems failure (technological). These five issues were
thought to have the most significant effect on other issues, thereby illustrat-
ing the nature of the complexity of global issues. Understanding these issues