Severe acute respiratory syndrome, tourism and the media

There has been an assumption, based on trends from the last two decades of the twentieth century, that global tourism will continue to grow. A number of events in the early twenty first century, however, have called this into question. Some of these have been natural occurrences, others anthropogenic, such as the terrorist attacks in New York in 2001, which indirectly affected global tourism, and that in Bali in 2002, where tourists were the major target. The outbreak of the disease severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in early 2003 had direct and significant impacts on global tourism. This article provides an overview of the SARS outbreak and its impact on global tourism, and focuses on the role of the media in relation to the disease outbreak. Eighteen months on from the height of the outbreak, SARS appeared to have been checked, but there have a number of subsequent cases and of particular concern, it has been predicted that the disease will return on a large scale, and therefore a future research agenda is also presented.