September 11 and the travel industry – five years on

September 11, 2001 was a day which will be forever imprinted in the memories of the millions who witnessed the events of that terrible day.

On this day the hijacking of aircraft morphed into civil airliners being employed by terrorists as weapons of mass destruction resulting in the deaths of 3,000 people including the passengers of four aircraft and the occupants of the hijacker’s targets, the World Trade Centre in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.  

The airline and travel industry globally was stunned by the events which briefly aroused a fear of flying and spurred an intensive global review of airline and airport security measures led by the federal Airports Authority in the United Sates and IATA (International Air Transport Association).

The travel industry globally has experienced many crisis events ranging from terrorist attacks against tourists in Bali, SARS, the Indian Ocean Tsunami, regional wars, crime waves and in Australia the collapse of Ansett which occurred on September 12, 2001.

However in recent history, no single event had had such a significant global impact on world tourism as September 11 even though the event itself directly struck three buildings in New York City and Washington DC.

Five years since that day we are still experiencing the impact of that event. Security procedures at airports worldwide have been significantly upgraded. The recent alleged abortive plot to blow up British and US aircraft over the Atlantic reminded everyone of the continuing challenges to airline and airport security.

All segments of the tourism, event and hospitality industry have been forced to become security conscious and factor security measures an essential cost of doing business.

The subsequent “war on terror” has been a major contributing factor to increase in fuel costs and in the quantum leaps of departure and security taxes airline passengers are obliged to pay on departure from most countries. 

In the immediate aftermath of September 11 airline insurance premiums rose by a factor of 10 although this has now eased since IATA’s new security measures for aircraft were applied to most world carriers. 

Travel insurers have been forced to review the coverage in their policies which prior to September 11 excluded coverage for loss arising from political motivated violence. 

Government travel advisories which were an invisible background issue in tourism decisions prior to September 11 are now widely disseminated and widely discussed as a determining factor in people’s decisions to travel to given destinations. There is still room to debate the accuracy of advisories.

The US tourism industry is still recovering from the shock of September.

Some parts of the US recovered quickly. Tourism savvy states and cities of the such as Hawaii, Las Vegas, Florida, Alaska and ironically New York City recovered quickly.

But the Clinton Administration’s decision to close the government funded USTTA (United States Travel and Tourism Administration) left US travel marketing in the highly capable but under-resourced hands of the travel industry’s private sector.

Unlike virtually every other country in the world, the US federal government abrogated its responsibilities to market destination USA. As we have seem throughout the world, when a national destination is in crisis, the government plays a major role in funding and co-ordinating marketing recovery.   

One of the more positive impacts of September 11 on the global tourism industry was that it actually led global tourism professionals to co-operate more effectively. The global tourism industry has realised that we all face a number of common challenges and threats which can only be overcome through co-operation and sharing of resources and skills.

The world tourism’s industry’s overwhelming response to the India Ocean tsunami of December 2004 was shining example that tourism professionals were able to look at issues beyond their immediate backyard.

The travel industry’s media has matured since September 11 and coverage of global issues which impact on tourism is far more comprehensive than it was a few years ago when the content most travel media was dominated by thinly disguised advertising dressed up in travel brochure clichés.

Hopefully the travel pages of our major mass media newspapers may eventually follow this trend.  September 11 forced maturity and responsibility onto the global travel industry and made us realise that there was much more to our business involved far more than giving our customers a good time and stimulating growth in turnover and profit.  

By David Beirman