Terrorism Control in the Tourism Industry

In some countries, for instance Egypt, terrorists try to hurt thecountry income from the tourism industry by violent actions againsttourists. Another example are actions of the Kurds to bring tourism down inthe east of Turkey. This paper is a first attempt to model some relevantaspects of these prey–predator relations. The country tries tomaximize profits from the tourism industry, where profit is defined as thedifference between revenue from the tourism industry and the sum ofexpenditures on tourism industry investments and expenditures on enforcementassociated with reducing terrorism. It turns out that, for reasonableparameter values, the optimal trajectory exhibits a cyclical strategy. Theinterpretation is that, after starting out with a low number of tourists andterrorists, tourism investments are undertaken to increase tourism. Thisattracts terrorists reducing the effect of tourism investments. Therefore,investment declines and so does the number of tourists. This makes it lessattractive for terrorists to act, so we are back in the original situation,where the whole thing starts again.