Travel Trade Gazette features a five-page tsunami special this week
which urges tourism companies to get holidaymakers back into
disaster-hit Asia.
Journalists from the weekly newspaper who travelled out to Thailand and Sri Lanka said they feared a “second terror”
in the form of mass unemployment if tourists stayed away from the region.
They
said some of the consumer media had exaggerated the extent of the
devastation and spread inaccurate rumours about disease and destruction.
Deputy
news editor Robin Searle, who visited the main tourist areas in
Thailand, added: “Many news reports have suggested the island of Phuket
has been completely devastated, but the truth is just a handful of
resorts have suffered major damage.
“The survivors of the tsunami
are effectively being punished twice. Their lives may have been spared
but their livelihoods still hang in the balance.”
Reporter Justin
Rahman, who visited the western coast of Sri Lanka, said: ” I saw
terrible scenes of destruction, but the infrastructure of the interior
is unaffected.
Although staying away appears honourable enough,
it will in fact only lead to a second terror for the island in the form
of mass unemployment.”
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