Factors
1. Epidemics and pandemics – Ebola
In 2014, Ebola broke out and tourists started
to cancel their trips to Africa, even those
destinations that are thousands of miles from
the nearest infected town. ERM Tours are a
company that organises holidays and travels
in South Africa. The 80% of their Asian
customers have cancelled their trip to Africa.
This includes 1500 tourists from Thailand
and it worth about €840,000.
2. Natural disasters – Nepal snowstorm, avalanche and earthquake
In normal circumstances, Nepal attracts about
1 million visitors and tourists per year. After
there was a Himalayan snowstorm in October
2014, that killed 43 people, many people have
cancelled their trip to Himalaya. After the
snowstorm, there was an avalanche that killed
16 local people on Mount Everest. In the
same year, there was an earthquake in Nepal
that killed about 3,200 people, including 17
on Mount Everest. It devastated the
infrastructure of Nepal. The tourism fell to
zero levels. 90% (almost 1,000 bookings) of travel agent trips have been cancelled to Nepal.
3. Terrorism - Egypt
In 2011, there were 15 million visitors and tourists in Egypt. In 2014, it decreased to 9
million. In 2015, Egypt attracted 640,200 tourists and now in 2016, there have been only
346,500. It is about 46%. Egypt faced bombs and political unrest over the last ten years.
There are some ghost towns now that were very popular before the terrorism, for example,
Nuweibaa and Sharm El Sheikh. The UK airlines have stopped operating flights to Egypt, as
there is still a high risk of terrorism.
Site of bomb at Shubra El Kheima Empty shops covering with clothes
1