Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Conclusion
Peace, safety, and security are the conditio sine qua non for development of
tourism. Any threats to the safety of tourists cause a decrease or total absence of
activity in an affected destination, which in turn can negatively influence inbound
tourism to neighboring destinations as well. The movement of demand from the
most significant generating markets to foreign countries is greatly impacted by the
Tour Operators and Destination Safety
349
H7898_Ch18.qxd 8/24/05 8:54 AM Page 349

---

leading tour operators, since they organize the largest number of trips abroad from
these markets. They have become very powerful and influential players, even shap-
ing the image of destinations. The crisis behavior of tour operators toward the des-
tination primarily depends on the type of crisis, its dimensions, its predicted
length, its consequences in the receiving country, the tour operator’s own business
interests in a country, and decisions by the governments of the generating counties.
Tour operators always try to diminish the safety and security hazards that their
clients could face. Therefore, they have to decide whether to include destinations
with different kinds of risks in their programs. As such, they influence the way a
particular destination is viewed, because their practice affects the attitude of all
potential tourists.
The Croatian experience supports the findings on vacation decisions by Sönmez
and Graefe (1998), which show that past tourism experience has only an indirect
effect on future behavior. Therefore, it is possible to claim that in order to bring
tourists back to a country following a crisis, it is not enough to rely on the fact that
they know the destination from the time before the crisis. The situation requires
commitment and considerable investment to reestablish the business with tour
operators and travel agencies to restore traffic and regain the earlier position in the
international market. The more the tour operator is vertically integrated with com-
panies in the receiving countries, the more attention it pays to the quick recovery.
But, not until the main and respected tour operators who dominate certain gener-
ating markets return to the receiving market after the crisis, can the country count
on full recognition in the main generating markets. This suggests that the largest
tour operators enjoy the trust of potential tourists and thus have crucial influence
on them and the resulting demand. As long as the “big players,” with real or even
symbolic capacities do not return to a particular receiving market, tourists continue
to question safety and security in vacationing there. Potential tourists view tour
operators as strong signals of travel safety or risk. Thus, they create an image in
the minds of both their potential clients and individual tourists. Interestingly, this
image may not always reflect the real situation at the destination.