World tourism was already down by 12 to 15 percent from the same period last year before the American Airlines Airbus A-300 crashed into a New York suburb on 12 November soon after taking off from nearby John F Kennedy airport.

The crash is bound to shake public confidence in air travel even though it was not likely "terrorist" activity but simply a tragic "accident".

Even before the crash, according to a World Tourism Organization (WTO) report, the tourism sector had "never before experienced a crisis of this magnitude". WTO predictions of tourist growth in 2001 (originally set at three to four percent) have been cut back to just one percent.

Optimistically, the secretary-general of the Madrid-based organization, Francesco Frangialli, said: "We expect the tourist industry to begin a comeback as the global economy improves in the second half of 2002.

"People need to travel for business and people nowadays consider holidays to be more of a necessity than a luxury, so the tourism industry proves time after time to be a very resilient one".

The WTO report, released on the eve of the World Travel Market (WTM) at Earls Court in London, ascribed the 12 to 15 percent drop in world tourism to the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington, the war in Afghanistan and the global economic recession that was already biting before the attacks.

A tourism expert at the WTM, interviewed in London, admitted that the latest New York crash coming two months after the terrorist attacks had severely undermined public confidence in air travel.

The opening of the WTM has been plagued by a series of disasters in recent years that have cast a pall over the event. These include the attack on American tourists at Luxor in Egypt and a series of plane crashes and now the collapsing European airline industry.

The hardest hit destinations are ones dependent upon long-haul air travel as well as places that are heavily dependent upon travel from the United States and countries in the Muslim world.

Mexico, which depends upon the U.S. for 85 percent of its arrivals has been particularly hard hit. It has responded aggressively by slashing sales taxes on conventions and increasing its promotional budget by 50 percent through a new public-private sector consortium.

Argentina is also cutting taxes on tourism businesses and re-focusing its promotional campaign towards domestic tourism.

The Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO) will have in place an emergency marketing, promotion and public relations campaign by the end of the year.

Egypt has earmarked US$30 million to subsidize charter flights into the country and ensure that tour operators do not reduce seat capacity.

In the U.S. itself, a $20 million advertising campaign starring President George W. Bush is scheduled to start next week to lure back tourists.

The Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) has already brought together 3,000 tourism industry executives to formulate a legislative package that includes low interest loans for tourism businesses, tax credits for personal travel and the formation of a government Tourism Policy Council.

Trans-Atlantic travel is among the major sufferers with high-spending Americans feeling more secure at home after 11 September and now the recent suburban tragedy in which all passengers bound for the Dominican Republic were killed.

East, central and southern Africa have all been affected by so-called war on terrorism. In Arusha, the safari capital of Tanzania, one tour operator who was heavily dependent upon its New York office for American tourists, is already making some staff redundant.

But, Tanzanian tour operators report, the level of European tourism is holding up and, while older Americans are staying at home, younger ones are taking advantage of the cheaper fares to get to east Africa. Kenya however, officials say, has been hard hit.

In Zimbabwe, where tourism has been devastated as a result of hostile publicity, largely in Britain and Australia, it had not been expected that this important sector would begin its gradual recovery until after the presidential elections in March or April 2002.

The WTO has renamed its original Crisis Committee of 21 countries and 15 leaders of the private sector groups, the Travel and Tourism Recovery Committee in acknowledgement of what is being done around the world to rekindle the tourism industry.

Surprisingly, other than Angola's Minister of Hotels and Tourism, Jorge Valetim, who is the current chair of the WTO Commission for Africa, no other east, central or southern African country is represented on this committee.

Other members are Egypt, Ethiopia and Tunisia while the only representative of the private sector is Ahmed el-Khadam, general manager of the Egyptian Federation of Tourist Chambers. (SARDC)

David Martin is the former Africa Correspondent of the London Sunday newspaper, The Observer, now resident in Zimbabwe where he has lived and worked since 1980, as a publisher and writer. He has written extensively about the 14 member countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).

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