ABSTRACT
Introduction Since the modern-day ascent of mass tourism in the nineteenth century, and the late twentieth-century advent of more specialized forms of tourism, the world has undergone many significant geopolitical changes. Countries have come and gone, states have united in supranational alliances, free trade agreements pervade the global trade scene, and international relations have been liberalized in most cases. Many positive socio-economic and political outcomes have resulted from these geopolitical transformations, but one thing remains constant and unchanged by contemporary trends: conflict and warfare between states and peoples. Tourism, one of the most pervasive socio-economic and political phenomena common the world over, has been influenced positively and negatively by political changes (Butler and Suntikul 2010); yet territorial, religious, and other types of conflicts and wars continue to impact tourism in a variety of ways.
