Post-conflict tourism opportunity spectrum (POCTOS): a framework for destinations recovering from conflict

Scholarly debate around phoenix tourism offers destination managers scope to chart out the nature of early recovery for those regions that have endured protracted conflict. This provides an opportunity to be able to transition destinations to a more developed and normalised state where tourism is viewed as both a catharsis for communities to heal and a wider tool for economic development. The authors propose in this article a visitor management framework (POCTOS) that focuses on the potential opportunity that exists in post-conflict regions and how that can change and mature over time. Recovery can be deliberately linked to re-packaging the past conflict as tourism experience or not. POCTOS is shaped by concepts such as the life-cycle model, tourism as a form of destination development, destination resilience, and destination capacity toward change. The framework presents “opportunity factors” that are tourist-centric as well as management centric. POCTOS is conceptual and has not been applied in this article to any particular case study. The authors, however, encourage that it be operationalized by researchers to determine its utility as a destination development managerial tool for post-conflict destinations.