Brand Management for Crisis: Tourism, Security, and Narrative Control in Post-Terror Contexts

Why do states use tourism campaigns to respond to terror attacks? Although much of the terrorism literature focuses on “hard,” defense-based responses, states also need a way to combat perceptions of instability and undermined authority. I argue that “symbolic” responses - those based in cultural imagery, marketing, or influence - are a vital political strategy in post-terror contexts, contributing to the social reconstruction of security. First, I conduct a series of logistic regressions to demonstrate where tourism is a common post-terror strategy: I compare terrorist attacks with 10+ casualties between 2007-2017 (767 attacks in 47 countries, according to the UMD Global Terrorism Database (GTD)) to an original dataset of the timing and implementation of tourism campaigns. Second, I examine three cases to theorize their political purpose: a "typical implementation" of tourism policy (France after the 2015 Paris attacks); an "atypical lack" of tourism policy (the United States after the Las Vegas, San Bernardino, and Orlando attacks, 2015-2017); and an "atypical/extreme implementation" of tourism policy (the al-Assad regime's Ministry of Tourism during the Syrian Civil War). The results suggest that, in an era of mass communication, “symbolic” security may be more important for states than “real” security. Overall, this article demonstrates how to better incorporate symbolism and visible manifestations in culture in mainstream political analysis.