ABSTRACT
The authors explore the multiple relationships between military occupations and tourism. The arrival of a foreign military power can have devastating consequences on a nation’s tourism industry. The destruction of war, the burden of sanctions, and the imposition of martial law, new rules and currencies, and restrictions on movement can all work to cripple the tourism supply and demand of a newly occupied territory. While giving attention to such negative consequences, in this chapter the authors also highlight other more unexpected aspects of the tourism–occupation nexus. In particular, they focus on the ways in which tourism provides opportunities for occupiers to profit from and justify their occupation. At the same time, it is also clear that tourism can be used to challenge occupation and to destabilise the occupier’s narrative. To explore these various relationships, the authors review the literature on tourism and military occupations that takes in events ranging from the British occupation of Napoleonic France in the early nineteenth century to the Russian occupation of Ukraine today. They complement this review with insights from their fieldwork in Palestine.
