Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Commitment to Destinations
The actions that tour operators are ready to take themselves in order to allow their
clients to visit a destination at risk depend greatly on the interest in a particular
country. The more important the destination is in their entire business program, the
more attached to it they are. If a tour operator is a shareholder in some hotels in
the respective destination, or if its owners are a company that has made some direct
foreign investments there, it is only natural that the tour operator would try to
return to that country more quickly than to another without such business interests.
Probably the most obvious example, from many that can be found to support this
supposition, is the development of tourism in Spain and Turkey.
It is estimated that Spain today absorbs about 18% of the total world package
market and thus represents the largest receiving destination for this form of
tourism in the world. The most influential German tour operators, such as TUI,
C&N, LTU, and FTI, are often owners or shareholders of hotel chains in Spanish
resorts to which they send their clients, but they also have exclusive fixed contracts
with many hotel companies. In this way, tour operators are able to ensure accom-
modation capacities at a particular destination for their clients, as well as to have
a stronger influence on the quality control of the services provided and to achieve
optimal standards. One also has to bear in mind that TUI and C&N are at the same
time leading tour operators in the Dutch, Belgian, and Austrian markets, and have
a very significant role in those and some other European generating markets from
which Spain receives a significant number of tourists.
In the development of international tourism in Turkey, which started relatively
late compared with traditional Mediterranean destinations, a spectacular growth
took place over a relatively short period of time. According to WTO data, in 1979
Turkey had some 600,000 international arrivals, in 1989 it registered 2,855,500,
and in 1998, 9,200,000. The most important role in the development of tourism in
Turkey was played by tour operators organizing favorable air package holidays to
this destination. They have made Turkey the bestseller on the Mediterranean. Of
course, this would not have been possible if German capital had not been invested
in infrastructure development. In 1998 Turkey was visited by 2.23 million tourists
from Germany and almost a million from the United Kingdom. The majority of
tourists from both countries go to Turkey on organized package tours. The most
powerful and influential European tour operators are owned by different entities
whose main field of activity often does not have any other close connection with
tourism, such as the industrial concern Preussag, which owns the largest European
travel concern, TUI and also the largest tour operator in the British market,
Thomson Travel. Very often powerful tour operators are only segments of huge
multinational concerns that control direct foreign investments in tourism as well.
Hence, it is understandable that such companies push the tour operators owned by
them to direct flows toward the destinations and countries in which the investors
are interested. TUI and C&N have invested money in hotels in Turkey in which
they are the main shareholders or complete owners (TUI owns the brand name
Iberotels-RIU, and C&N has a 95.5% share in Paradise Hotels). Moreover, German
tour operators are tightly linked to smaller or larger hotel chains elsewhere (like
Tunisia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, and the Caribbean). For example, TUI partly or
totally owns over 170 hotels in 19 receiving countries and in 42 resorts, with a
total capacity of over 85,000 beds. In 5 years’ time, TUI intends to raise its hotel
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portfolio by an additional 40,000 beds. Business logic requires a tour operator to
care more about a destination in which it is financially involved.
Following these examples, it becomes clear why the safety risks experienced
both in Spain and Turkey, coming specifically from terrorist groups, have so far not
had such major repercussions as in some other countries. The strong commitment
to destinations is even more marked by tour operators who specialize in only one
or a few countries. They cannot simply abandon the only destination they may have
in their program, and so they tend to stick to it fiercely. In a time of crisis, they are
sometimes the only connection between the receiving and generating markets and
are thus very important for the future of the destination. However, vertical inte-
gration with the accommodation sector in the respective receiving country repre-
sents a substantial risk for the tour operator, particularly when the country involved
falls into a crisis. Since tour operators work with very low net profit margins, it is
important for them to share in the profit of different components of the whole
product that they supply. They are ready to take such risks, but only in those coun-
tries that are attractive for foreign capital and that have legal conditions that sup-
port foreign investors. The more the tour operator is vertically integrated with
companies in the receiving countries, the more attention it pays to the speedy
recovery of tourism in the respective country.