How tourist destinations recover after terrorism

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0:10We are officially deep into Mardi Gras. And for New Orleans, it's a time for parades and putting together your best purple, green, and gold outfit. It's also a really important time for the city's economy. Right. For retail across most of the country, the Christmas shopping season is king. But in New Orleans, that crown goes to Mardi Gras. Mardi Gras is the bigger holiday, which is crazy, right? Is it a close second or not even close? Uh, I would say not even close. That's Lauren Haydel, and she's the owner of Flirty Girl. It's a New Orleans t-shirt company that's grown to nine different stores across Louisiana and Mississippi.

0:48We caught up with Lauren around the start of Mardi Gras back in January, because this year there is a somber mood mixed in with the celebrations. How has traffic been during these first few weeks of the year? The French Quarter has been especially quiet. New Orleans is still reeling from a terrorist attack on New Year's Day when a man drove a truck through a crowd in the French Quarter. He killed 14 people and injured dozens more. It was an awful tragedy and the city is still mourning. It also had people there worried that the tourists the city's economy relies on would stay away. And we get it could sound callous to talk about business after a tragedy like that.

1:28But the livelihoods of so many people rely on tourism. A sharp drop in visitors can be devastating for both business owners and workers. This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Stephen Bissaha from the Gulf States Newsroom. On today's show, we talk about how terrorism affects tourism and why some places recover faster than others.

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2:58Did you get a beignet when you were there? I did everything there. I was there for work, but I really loved it. these beautiful pubs and the jazz and everything was cute and was attractive and was beautiful in there. She was there last year for a big education event representing the University of Deusto, where she is a professor of tourism. And on New Year's Day, Samiha was watching TV when she saw the news about the terrorist attack in New Orleans. I was like, goodness, I was there and I looked directly and I said, this is a very safe place. Now, Samiha had a unique perspective on this because she studies terrorism's effect on tourism.

3:37It's one of the worst crises that could face the tourism industry. She says just to compare a terrorist attack to a different kind of crisis, like a tsunami or an earthquake, they all cause chaos and destruction. Either way, Samihas says after a terrorist attack, one of the most important factors that decides how many tourists will stay away and for how long is where the attack happens. Basically, the most iconic, one-of-a-kind travel destinations are going to be the ones that recover the fastest. Are we going to keep ourselves from seeing certain destinations? No. So the beautiful experience of jazz, of food, that I will do in New Orleans, the pyramids that I will see in Egypt, it's a London bridge that I want to stand on and have a picture.

4:21So we are going to go anyway. Let's take Las Vegas as an example here. A mass shooting in the city in 2017 killed 60 people and injured hundreds. Three weeks after the attack, domestic flight bookings were down more than 20%. Still, a year later, the number of people visiting the city was basically back to normal. But for places that aren't a must-visit location, like Vegas, it's going to just take a lot longer for tourists to come back. An iconic destination, in a few months, maximum one year, they recover. Sometimes even a few days. But in a destination with less iconic places, would recover in three, four years.

4:59Oh, that's a big difference. Yeah. And then, OK, a big difference. But what they do usually, one way that they handle with this crisis is that they target other types of markets. By targeting other markets, she means trying to bring in tourists that are closest to that country, both close physically and culturally too. You know the language. You know the country. You've been there or not before. You are close geographically or not. So you have already an idea about the country. So if something happens in Barcelona, people from North Africa will still continue to go to Barcelona. The big thing we're really talking about here is reputation.

5:36Whoever a country has a good reputation with, well, they're going to come back a lot faster after a crisis. But that reputation takes an even bigger hit, depending on the answer to the question. Smeja says always gets asked after an attack. What if a second one does actually happen? Once it happens once and then we go into stability and then it happens a second time over a few months, then the second hit is even bigger than the first. Samihah is originally from Tunisia and she says this is exactly what happened there in 2015 after terrorists killed 22 people at the Bardo Museum. Samihah says visitors started coming back, but then there was a second attack at a beach resort that killed 38 foreign tourists.

6:22It took us four years to recover, three to four years to recover. That is a pretty long time. And that's a lot of missed hotel bookings and taxi rides and restaurant reservations during that time. Yeah, that's right. But, you know, Samia says there's also another really important lesson to take here. And it's that a lot of countries do recover. Yes, terrorist attacks can cause real harm to a country's economy. But it's often not lasting harm. Tourists do eventually come back. Barcelona is perfectly filled up of tourists. They had an terrorist attack one in 2017. London in 2017 in June, they had one.

7:01They are perfectly beautiful destination and filled up of tourists. Even for the case of Tunisia, they recovered. Why? Because in the history, it has been always a safe country. So they recovered, but they take more time to recover. For New Orleans, it's still early days. So we called Lauren Heydell back to see how her business is doing. Hey, Lauren, how are you? Hey, sorry, Mr. Call, because it's Mardi Gras and we're busy. That is positive news for her business. Yeah, that's what we want to hear is busy. She was running around from store to store when we called. And she says, you know, the big item this year are those, like, Taylor Swift sparkling face freckles, but, you know, in Mardi Gras colors.

7:41I'm trying to visualize it coming up short, but I'm sure they're quite the same. You know, it's New Orleans, Mardi Gras, you can expect to be pretty flashy. And she said, yeah, the year started off quiet with foot traffic, but it has picked up and is about the same as it was last year. We have not seen a difference. So it's just been Mardi Gras business as usual for us here in New Orleans. It has not affected us one bit. One way to measure New Orleans' recovery is the Super Bowl. New Orleans was the host city, and about 65 ,000 fans still gathered in the Superdome for the game. It was not exactly a sold-out crowd.

8:19The Superdome could have still held 10 ,000 more fans. But the city leaders still claimed the event as a success. National Guard troops were a significant presence in the French Quarter ahead of the game. And Samia said this is the kind of thing that could help a city bring visitors back, you know, step up that security. For Lauren, though, it was unsettling. She said it didn't feel like the New Orleans she grew up with. But she also did appreciate that the troops were there and the message it sent to visitors, that New Orleans is still safe. This episode was produced by Cooper Katsby-Kim with engineering by Sina Lafredo.

8:58It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Cake and Cannon is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR.