Tunisian Tourism Struggles to Survive After Terrorist Attacks

I thought about this as the National Dialogue Quartet was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Good, the Muslim Brotherhood was kept from power in Tunisia, but that's not to say there's no terrorism problem. It's bad there, terrible in fact.

At Der Spiegel, "The True Cost of Terrorism: Tunisia's Tourism Industry Struggles to Survive":

At the end of June, 37 guests of a Tunisian resort hotel died in a hail of terrorist gunfire. Since then, tourists have stayed away, and the tragedy has only just begun.

Above the terrace gate at the Hotel Riu Imperial Marhaba in Port El Kantaoui, a worker on a ladder is filling the last bullet hole left behind by Seifeddine Yacoubi when he killed 37 European tourists at the resort in early summer. Yacoubi walked up from the beach wielding a Kalashnikov and went on a half-hour rampage at the luxury hotel before police shot and killed him. Two-and-a-half months have passed since the massacre. It is the beginning of fall, but the sun is still strong in Tunisia. It is 10 a.m. and the temperature is already 30° Celsius (86°F) under a clear blue sky.

It takes just a few minutes to make the last, small bullet hole disappear. But the memory of the horror, of course, remains.
Manfred Buszkiewicz is sitting in dappled shade next to the hotel manager, watching the repair work and drinking a morning beer. His mobile phone makes a bleating noise whenever it receives a report on his favorite soccer team, 1 FC Cologne (the club's mascot is a Billy goat). Buszkiewicz, who is from the town of Euskirchen, near Cologne, has the club's app on his phone. It's a Tuesday morning in mid-September, the second week of Buszkiewicz's vacation. His wife Fatima is sunbathing on the beach below the hotel. Two waiters in snow-white shirts and black vests are standing behind the terrace door, waiting for him to empty his beer glass. The Riu Marhaba Imperial has 130 employees, including 26 headwaiters. But there are currently only 30 guests. There are 80 wicker chairs on the terrace, but only one of them is occupied -- by Buszkiewicz.

"Welcome," he says, and empties his beer.

One of the two waiters promptly disappears into the deserted hotel lobby. It's the size of a soccer field and 15 meters (50 feet) high, with a glass dome at the top. The marble floor is filled with armchairs, sofas, glass tables, palm trees and a large black concert grand. A guest could sit in the lobby for an hour, pondering life, without seeing a single person. The only discernible movement in the lobby is that of the four glass elevators, as they move rhythmically up and down.

After a minute, the next beer arrives -- with a frothy head, as Buszkiewicz had requested. The staff is primarily accustomed to English guests, who like their beer flat. This is his fifth stay at the Riu Imperial Marhaba, where the personnel call him Manni. He hands the waiter a coin. Although everything is included in the room price at the Imperial Marhaba, the waiters depend on tips, and now that there are few guests, they are especially dependent on Manni.

"There are usually 700 to 800 guests here at this time of the year," says Buszkiewicz. "And now? It's a dance of the dead."

'Perfectly Understandable'

The June 26 massacre destroyed the tourism industry in Tunisia. Many countries, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Great Britain, issued travel warnings in the days following the attack, major tour operators pulled out of Tunisia and most charter flights to Tunisian resorts were cancelled. The changes meant that Buszkiewicz had to fly to Tunisia from Düsseldorf this time instead of Cologne.

He thought long and hard about whether to travel to Tunisia this year. A friend from Düsseldorf, an elderly woman named Gisela, was killed in the massacre. A Belgian woman Buszkiewicz and his wife have known for a long time was shot in the leg. They visited her and her husband at home after the attack.

"Of course, they won't be coming here anymore," Buszkiewicz says of the Belgian couple, "which is perfectly understandable, in a way."

Buszkiewicz and his wife had originally booked their trip for exactly the time when the attack occurred, so that they could see the friends they had made at the hotel on previous visits. But because their daughter was getting married in the summer, they decided to postpone the trip until September. That's why they are still alive, says his wife. When Buszkiewicz went to the travel agency in Euskirchen to cancel the trip, the woman working there said she understood. She talked about Spain and Greece, and Buszkiewicz nodded. He didn't really care where they went.

Buszkiewicz owns a small company that makes conveyor belts. He has eight employees, and there is always plenty to do. In his free time, he drives around the Eifel Mountains on his Honda Gold Wing motorcycle. He only takes a vacation once a year, and when he does, Buszkiewicz wants peace and quiet, sunshine and his beer served with a frothy head. As he was driving home from the travel agency, he felt guilty, as if he had let down the staff at the Imperial Marhaba. Even when the hotel was extremely busy, they always knew that he had ordered a Bacardi and Coke. The Express, a Cologne tabloid, wrote that the hotel employees had formed a human chain to protect their guests from the gunman. Some of them had reportedly shouted: "Shoot me!" But Yacoubi only targeted tourists.

Buszkiewicz sent a fax to Kamel, the head receptionist. "Manni, everything is safe," he wrote back. Buszkiewicz returned to the travel agency and booked a double room at the enchanting Imperial Marhaba. The two-week trip cost €2,500 ($2,820) for him and his wife, including room, board and airfare. He brought Kamel a food processor, a large bottle of Joop! cologne and a handful of company pens. They gave him and his wife Fatima a suite on the fourth floor of the left wing, the only one the hotel is currently using. Buszkiewicz defied the circumstances, as has the Hotel Imperial Marhaba...

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