Terrorist attacks targeting tourist destinations in the Middle East have increased, including in Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, and more recently Jordan. This clearly indicates that terrorist groups have adopted a new approach in carrying out their attacks based on three main factors: critical timing; repetition; vital targets.

These groups aim to achieve two main goals, namely to continue to undermine local economies and put pressure on foreign parties in the region that are hostile to them. Accordingly, it appears the tourism sector will continue to retreat in the coming phase, especially in countries where there is high turmoil. This will undoubtedly negatively impact regional economies.

Key aspects:

The terrorist attacks that took place in several Middle East countries since 2015 reveal a new approach by terrorist groups to target the tourist sector, including several key aspects:

1-    Critical timing: Terrorist groups such as ISIS purposefully chose critical timing for attacking the Karak Citadel in Jordan at the end of December 2016, killing one Dutch tourist. The timing aimed to disrupt tourism to Jordan ahead of the year-end holiday season which is a tourism high peak season there. In the wake of the attack, the US State Department issued a travel warning to Jordan and several Jordanian tourism officials said a number of bookings were indeed canceled.

Meanwhile, the timing of the bombing of St. Peter’s Church in Egypt was also disappointing for the tourism sector because it once again raised doubts about Egypt’s tourism sector recovering after it showed some positive signs in recent months.

2-  Repeated attacks: It is also clear that terrorist groups in the region are adopting other tactics to carry out high frequency attacks at a variety of tourist sites. This confirms a sense of insecurity about the tourist destination for visitors which results in long-term losses in the tourism sector of various countries.

Turkey was a target of repeated attacks by terrorist groups since 2015 carried out by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and its armed wings such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, as well as other terrorist attacks by IS. Tourist sites in Istanbul and Ankara were the most attractive targets for these groups. The attack that was most serious with much impact was the bombing of Istklal Street, a popular tourist shopping destination in downtown Istanbul, in March, 2016.

Tunisia was also the target of a series of terrorist attacks in 2015 including a tourist bus, Bardo Museum and a tourist resort in Sousse.

3-    Vital targets: Terrorist attacks target vital and crowded tourist and heritage facilities and areas to ensure greater negative impact politically, diplomatically or materialistically. There is no doubt that the grave losses in Egypt’s tourism sector after a Russian airplane exploded over Sinai in October, 2015, is strong evidence of the wide-ranging damage of attacking vital tourist targets.

Another tactic adopted by terrorist groups is targeting foreign political and diplomatic figures in regional countries, which could force foreign countries to increase travel restrictions to these tourist markets. According to many reports, the direct motive why Turkish policeman Mevlut Mert Altintas assassinated Russian Ambassador to Ankara Andrey Karlov was hatred for Russia at the end of the battle for Aleppo, but this operation could also meet another goal of terrorist groups. Namely, undermine economic relations between Turkey and Russia, including a possible drop in Russian tourists visiting Turkey. They are the second largest nationality of tourists to Turkey, and now Russia is to place travel restrictions on its nationals traveling to Turkey out of concern they will be targets of future attacks.

Reasons for escalation:

There are many factors behind recent escalation in terrorist attacks in the Middle East, as follows:

1-    Widespread hostilities: The aforementioned terrorist attacks reveal that tourist sites are a prime target for terrorist groups, especially ISIS, which is especially focused on targeting foreigners or nationals of countries in the international coalition against the group in Iraq and Syria. Although US nationals were a prime target in the past, it seems that today, especially after the assassination of the Russian ambassador in Turkey, there is a trend of targeting Russian nationals overseas. Many believe Russia is the primary party responsible for the suffering of the Syrian people.

2-    Soft targets: All countries in the region took preemptive measures to secure tourist sites and facilities after the onset of Arab revolutions and protests, but terrorist attacks have shown that these were easy targets for terrorist groups. This may be caused by human or material inefficiency in securing tourist sites and other locations in some regional countries, as well as the tactical evolution of terrorist attacks when targeting these locations.

3- Undermining local economies: Tourism is a key source of foreign currency and employment in several countries in the Middle East. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, tourism in the region in 2015 accounted for $72.4 billion of GDP in the region (three per cent of GDP), and provided 2.5 million jobs (3.3 per cent of jobs). Thus, targeting tourist facilities could reduce economic profits now and in the future.

Possible repercussions:

Although some regional tourism markets started to make a gradual comeback, such as in Tunisia which is receiving more visitors, security tensions in the region and recent terror attacks in Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, will in the end limit gains in the tourism sector as a whole. It is expected that tourist figures to the region will remain low. Last year, the number of tourists in major tourism markets in the region reached 71.3 million tourists compared to 73.1 million in 2014, according to the World Tourism Organization.

It is also obvious that tourism markets that began to recover or are stable will also be affected by rising hostile sentiments towards Russians in December, 2016, with the assassination of the Russian ambassador. This will slow down Russian tourism to the region, and dash the hopes of some countries that replaced Western tourists with Russian tourists, as seen in this year’s tourism season in Tunisia.

Losses of some regional countries may not be short-term but last a long time. In countries such as Jordan, however, the recent terrorist attack could be overcome quickly within months, while the tourism sector in countries such as Egypt and Turkey will suffer for a longer time – especially since several European countries, as well as Russia – have placed more travel restrictions to these tourist destinations. 

In conclusion, terrorist attacks in the region will continue to be a major concern for tourists. This makes it harder to revive the tourism sector and could perhaps take longer because it is linked to the bigger issue of fighting terrorism.