One of the current issues effecting the Europe is terrorism. Terrorism is a bad factor because it put people's life in risk, which is not good because it's also effecting the economy, tourism and politics. The European destinations marked as high threat of terrorism are the Belgium, France, Spain and Turkey. I will focus on those one because in those countries the level of terrorism is the highest one, so they are the most threating countries in Europe. For this issue I will use Belgium as an example. On 22nd of March 2016 in Belgium there was a suicide bombing in the Brussels Airport. In two bombings which take place on the same day in the Airport 13 people have died and 35 injured and people are horrified. There are few effects on the airport of this bombing, one of them is that the flights are cancelled and the airport is evacuated. This effect is causing more effect such as loss of profit and damaged building. The loss of profit is because the airport is closed and the flight are cancelled. That means that the airport do not make money so they are loosing the profit as the airlines because the airport is closed so it is causing the problems for the airlines. The airport's building need to be repaired so they need to put more money to open the airport. On the same day on the same time there was second attack in Brussels metro station, so in those two terror attacks around 34 people have died. The effect is has on Brussels is that the all of the public transport is closed also the Eurostar is suspended to and from Brussels. The cause of this terror attack is to set against the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, which precipitate in the terror attack in France on 13th November 2015. So what Belgium is doing about it? Belgium have send extra 225 of troops to Brussels to keep people safe and they have closed the public transport and airport also they have evacuated the airport. This is good because by this they show that they want to keep people safe, so this is why they have send the troops, closed the public transport and the airport and evacuated people from there. The effect of terrorism in this case in Belgium could be as I have said before on the economy, tourism and politics. There could be some effect on economy because the businesses will make less money than before until it bankrupt and there will be less jobs and more unemployed people. This could be because the number of visitors will decrease because people want to stay safe. So if the number of visitors will decrease then the business such as accommodation providers, attractions, catering and many more will have less customers so it means there will be an decrease in their profit. Tourism may be affected as well because people will be scared to go to Belgium. This destination may be less accessible because if airlines will see the decrease in passengers flying to Belgium they will cut the flights form 10 per day to 5 flights a day. They may do this because it is not worth it to fly with nearly empty aircraft. Airlines want to have the flights full if they are not they will cut the flights. It may effect the politics as well because the country needs to get more secured, so they may create some strict laws . They may do this so those laws will be strict for everyone and they may be annoying but it is all to secure the country and the residents of Belgium. For example there will be more police on street asking people for passports and ask many questions. So what I mean by this that many people will be judged guilty with reason but by mistake and people should be careful and don’t act suspiciously. The FCO (Foreign Commonwealth Office) have marked Belgium as an destination with high treat of terrorism. Many people from UK check this website before traveling abroad, so the effect it may have is that UK's residents may stop going to Belgium because of this high level. What causes the terrorism? The terrorism can be causes by few terms such as political, strategic, psychological, group psychology, socio-economic and religious. The terms like political and socio-economic can be caused by the lack of education or lack of political freedom. If the laws changes or the government make some decisions this can cause the terrorism because some people think if they will use the violence then they will win and the decision will be changed by the government. The terrorist want to fight with the government's decision and they want to get their attention. In terms of the strategic and psychological (Individual and Group) the terrorism can be caused because of physically unstable, influence of other people and achieving the goal. If someone is physically unstable they can be dangerous for others also if there is a group of people they can change the point of thinking of someone, so they will have the influence on the other person. As I have said before terrorism is caused by desire to achieve the goal such as winning the argument with government, to gain an advantage over someone or some similar situations. It also can be in terms of religion because some people want the whole world to be just one religion and to have one God because this person's God is the most loved one. They want to use the violence to make people scared and to force them to change the religion also some religious events cause the arguments between two or more different groups. The second current factor effecting which is Europe is the competition. The competition between European destinations, different countries in Europe are still a competition for each other because for example Spain, Turkey, Italy and Greece have the same things to offer such as beaches, sunny weather, warm climate and so on. Every country wants to have the biggest amount of visitors and they want to be better than the other destinations in Europe and even worldwide. The effect it have on tourism is that some of the destinations have high number of visitors and sometimes it decreases. It may be why the number of visitors have decreased. For example the top first international tourism destinations in 2014 were the France, United States, Spain, China and Italy. In 2013 France was the most popular destination, it have 83.6 millions of international tourist arrivals and in 2014 France have 83.7 millions of international tourist arrivals. Spain have 60.7 millions of international tourist arrivals in 2013 and in 2014 Spain have 65.0 millions of international tourist arrivals. The Italy have 47.7 millions of international tourist arrivals in 2013 and in 2014 Italy have 48.6 millions of international tourist arrivals. They have different amount of international tourist arrivals each year because now they are developing bur sometimes its number decreases and the case can be the competition. The evidence for this is that in 2011 Sweden had 5.222 millions of international tourist arrivals and in 2012 the number decreased to 5.146 millions. This statistics shows a little drop in number of international tourist arrivals and this could be caused by the competition. The big competition for less popular destination in Europe such as Netherlands, Slovenia and Bulgaria are the France, Spain, UK and many more popular destinations of Europe. The evidence for this shows when the statistics with the numbers of international tourist arrivals per year are compared. So Netherlands in 2013 have 12.7 millions of international tourist arrivals , the Slovenia have 2.2 millions of international tourist arrivals in the same year and Bulgaria 6.8 millions of international tourist arrivals also in the same year. On the other hand destination like France have 83.6 millions of international tourist arrivals in 2013, Spain had 60.7 millions of international tourist arrivals in 2013 and United Kingdom have 31.1 millions of international tourist arrivals also in 2013. So this is the evidence for this that some destinations are more popular than the other one in the same continent. The popularity of destinations depends on many factors here are some of them:
Terrorism
Health and vaccinations
Safety and crime
Currency exchange
Economy
Politics
Low cost airlines
Accessibility
Climate
Trends.
Terrorism is an factor which can effect the popularity and the number of visitors of some destination. If the destination is marked as the high threat of the terrorism or general threat the number of visitors will be decreased because the destination is marked as not safe at the moment. In my opinion I prefer to visit destination such as Bulgaria or Poland because their level of terrorism is underlying or low and rather than visiting place with high treat of terrorism like Belgium or Turkey. People don’t want to risk their life and they want to be safe. Health in certain destinations can also effect the popularity and number of visitors. The example of this can be Portugal, this destination is now effected by this factor because of the Zika virus. Safety can effect the number of visitors because if the destination is not safe in case of crime or terrorism it will have some effect on number of arrivals to this destination. Economy can be another factor which can effect the choice of choosing the destination. For example if the economy is strong then the currency is strong and then it can be really expensive the exchange some currencies for the strong one. The another thing in economy can be the prices of accommodation, food, attractions and so on, if the prices will be expensive then people will chose other destination which is cheaper. The availability of low cost airlines can effect the number of visitors and gives an huge competitive advantage for the destination which have access to low cost airlines. Low cost airlines are important because they are the trend and they are popular, people are flying with this kinds of airlines because the fares are cheap. Accessibility is an factor which effects the tourism because if the place is not accessible then there will be less tourists because people like and visit accessible destinations. The accessibility is also important within the destination how easy is to more around the destination, if there is no buses and low amount of taxies then people may chose different destination. Climate is effecting countries number of visitors because in winter people are looking for sun so they may visit places such as Cyprus, Greek islands or Spanish islands because there is warmer than in Finland or Estonia. This is how climate can change the number of visitors and the popularity for some season of the year. So if some destinations are effected by those factors and some are less effected then it gets the competitive advantage for the less effected destination, so this benefits the destinations because they have their chance to increase their popularity. This is also why some countries are developing because they get the advantage over their competition.