Abstract

SORO, Elsa; MILANO, Claudio; MANSILLA, José A  and  SANCHEZ BERGARA, Sheila. Tourism and Terrorism: Deconstructing the Double T Imaginary in the Case of Tunisia. Estud. perspect. tur. [online]. 2018, vol.27, n.4, pp.852-866. ISSN 1851-1732.

After the attacks suffered by Tunisia in 2014 and 2015, the North African country undertook a series of international marketing campaigns aimed at restoring the country as a traditional destination of sun, beach and cultural attractions, emphasizing the conditions of their security conditions. These institutional campaigns sought to remove, figuratively and thematically, the traces of the violence and operated as a tentative reconstruction of the tourist aspect before the catastrophe of the attacks, when Tunisia represented a distant place and, at the same time, close to Europe and to the European tourist: an exotic destination nearby. In this way, it left aside the possibilities offered by alternatives such as dark tourism, a prominent protagonist of the new tourism modalities, and its possibilities for tourism of reality with social content. The competition offered by destinations with similar characteristics - Spain, Greece, Italy or France, among others - was disrupted by suffering, these same sites, terrorist attacks of similar nature. The article aims to invite reflection on the resilience of the communication strategies adopted in risk management and emergency, and how the latter can represent an important moment of resignification of the territories concerned.

Keywords : Dark tourism; Touristic mobility; Terrorism.