Tourism and Peace: a simple and complex nexus

In today's world, peace is a very important concept, and countries seek to maintain peace in their society in various ways. One of these ways is the development of tourism industry. In addition tovast economic benefits that this industry could provide for different societies, tourism can have socio-cultural benefits such as understanding between cultures, creating peaceful relations between different countries and encouraging them to avoid potential and actual conflicts between each other. In fact, tourism has the potential to play a significant role in promoting peace. By facilitating economic cooperation, cross-cultural interactions and reconciliation initiatives, tourism can contribute to build a more peaceful and interconnected world. Tourism also can resolve the internal and international conflicts among different stakeholders, inside and outside of each country. international peacebuilding by tourism, that seems more important than internal debates, is a kind of public diplomacy and every country tries to pursuit this as international relation goal. Governments involve themselves into tourism to be a powerful instrument for creating goodwill and decreasing crisises. One stated issue in the relationship between tourism and peace is the debate about their interaction. Some scholars emphasized the role of tourism in promoting international peace. But some argue that tourism may be more of a beneficiary or peacekeeper rather than a direct peacemaker.

Keywords:

tourism , peace , cultural understanding , public diplomacy