Attacks don’t keep the tourists away
LONDON – Tourists braved initial fears to visit London’s greatest attractions Friday, using the subway system a day after deadly terrorist blasts tore through the city’s transport system and giving hope to businesses that the financial ill-effects would be short-lived.
“It’s not going to happen again, not today,” said 22-year-old Nathan Jones, an Australian gazing at St. Paul’s Cathedral on Friday.
Such grit is good news for a country that attracts around 30 million visitors a year and has a tourism industry that directly contributes 4 percent to Britain’s total gross domestic product of $2.1 trillion.
Tourists are drawn by such timeless icons as Big Ben and the Tower of London, the pageantry of Buckingham Palace and its changing of the guard, and Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park. The city is replete with signature images such as the red phone booths, the double-decker buses, helmeted policemen with truncheons and classic black cabs.
On Friday, several tourists said they were taking their cue from locals, many of whom journeyed – somewhat nervously – into work under the watchful eye of an increased police presence in the subway, known in London as the Tube, and on the streets.
“The Brits are pretty stoic, they are exuding confidence under the circumstances,” said Andy Loewi, 55, a visitor from Denver at the British Museum in Bloomsbury, near the site of Thursday’s bus explosion in Tavistock Square.
That attitude should be heartening to British tourism operators, whose excitement Wednesday over London’s winning bid to host the 2012 Olympics quickly turned to despair when bombs ripped through three subway trains and a double-decker bus. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds were wounded.
VisitBritain, the country’s tourism authority, which had said the Olympics could bring “well over $3.5 billion to Britain’s visitor economy,” was cautiously optimistic Friday that the fallout from the attacks would be short-lived.
“It’s still rather early to say,” said spokesman Elliott Frisby. “We certainly anticipate an initial drop but by the end of the year we hope tourism will have fully recovered.”
VisitBritain pointed to Madrid, which drew 11 percent more tourists in 2004 despite a train bombing in March of that year that killed 191 people and injured more than 1,500.
Similarly, economists pointed to the adaptability of the U.S. and Spanish economies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the train blasts as encouragement for Britain. A key factor in both those recoveries was that the attacks were not followed by more.
“If the attacks (in London) turn out to be isolated, then calm should return quickly,” economists at Goldman Sachs U.S. Economics Research wrote in an analysis. “That is what transpired following the Madrid train bombings.”