Tourism, Terrorism, Morality, and Marketing

A short time after the January 2015 Paris attacks, the city was quiet, perhaps too quiet. Associated press reporters noted that the tourists have simply gone. In a mid –January news article by Thomas Adamson perhaps summed up the situation best when it stated: “Among the tourists who were still braving visits, many took comfort in the extra security presences. With 10,000 troops deployed across the country including 6,000 in the Paris region alone, the security operation put in motion after the attacks is the most extensive in French soil in recent history The (Bryan Texas) Eagle, page A-3, January 19, 2015). The dearth of tourists however was short lived, as the French were able to assure the world that they had taken full control of the situation, employed some ten thousand troops to sensitive locales, and have given the impression that the terrorist attacks were an anomaly. The terrorism attacks in many parts of Europe remind us that terrorism is as much about purposeful negative marketing as it is about death and destruction.