Protocols as a strategy to reduce travel barriers between countries experiencing or have recently experienced serious political difficulties

This paper proposes a suite of diplomatic protocols that may be employed to assist the development of bilateral tourism between countries that have been or are currently involved in serious political conflict. The need for protocols of this nature is demonstrated by the difficulties that currently define tourism between South Korea and North Korea. Each country is open to international tourism except for cross-border tourism from the other Korean state. The potential for tourism to assist in the development of peaceful relations between countries has been advocated by a number of scholars but to date a policy mechanism to achieve this has not been suggested. Given the success of international protocols in a wide range of diplomatic, trade and cultural circumstances, the development and adoption of tourism protocols to assist bilateral tourism between states involved in conflict offers a mechanism to promote peaceful bilateral tourism flows. Four tourism protocols are proposed as a mechanism that reduces travel barriers. © 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.