Tourism today is second only to oil as the world’s leading export commodity, accounting for global earnings of more than $300 billion, or nearly 25 per cent of total world GNP (Poirier 2000, p30, cited in Dieke, 2000). Over the last two decades, tourism has proved to be the world’s fastest growing economic sector, with average growth of 7.1 per cent per year in arrivals and 12.5 per cent in receipts (Poirier 2000, p30, cited in Dieke, 2000). So tourism should be seen as a major industry and a boost to the economy generally through the results or ‘flow on’ of the multiplier effect in tourism (Elliott 1997).

Despite these statistics, apparent growth tourism in many countries falters when confronted with various political instabilities that cause to distract development in tourism.

This exploratory paper, which is part of an ongoing major research project, will examine how tourism can be used as a tool for political and ideological goals, how tourism reform occurs by the industry of particularly politically troubled nations, how tourism can be moulded by the political purpose, and the impact political instability has upon the healthy operation of tourism.