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There was a time when the biggest threats to travel plans were a missed flight, a lost passport or perhaps the realisation, halfway to the airport, that you had left the garage door open. In 2026, those concerns can seem almost quaint.
Over the past six months, international travel has found itself caught in a much bigger story. Wars have redrawn flight paths, politics has changed where people feel welcome, extreme weather has begun influencing where and when we travel, border technology has created queues rather than convenience, and some of the world ' s most popular destinations are openly asking whether they really want quite so many visitors.
And yet, remarkably, people are still travelling. That perhaps is the most important story of all.
The World Bank ' s June 2026 Tourism Watch described international tourism as " resilient but increasingly uneven ", with geopolitical tensions, rising costs and disruptions to air connectivity reshaping the industry. The European Travel Commission, meanwhile, reported that international arrivals to Europe were still up 5.6 per cent in the early months of the year.
The message is clear: we haven ' t stopped travelling. We have simply become more selective about where,
when and how we do it. Perhaps nowhere demonstrates that better than the
Middle East.
The conflict involving Iran has been the single biggest geopolitical shock to global travel during the past six months. What began as a regional security crisis rapidly became an aviation and tourism crisis because of the Middle East ' s extraordinary importance to global air travel.
Dubai, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain are not simply destinations. They are giant intersections in the world ' s aviation network. The Middle East accounts for around five per cent of international tourist arrivals but approximately 14 per cent of global international transit traffic. Before the conflict, the four major hubs were processing roughly 526,000 passengers every day.
When those connections are disrupted, the effects don ' t stop at the edge of the war zone.
Flights between Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia are rerouted. Journeys become longer. Aircraft burn more fuel. Connections disappear. Airlines cancel services. Travellers reconsider trips that suddenly involve three connections instead of one. And the price of getting somewhere rises.
The World Travel & Tourism Council calculated in March that the conflict was costing Middle Eastern tourism at least US $ 600 million a day in international visitor spending. Gloria Guevara, the council ' s president and CEO, described Travel & Tourism as " the most resilient of sectors ", while warning that restoring traveller confidence would require " clear communication, strong coordination " and measures that reinforced safety and stability.
For Australians, the effect has been particularly noticeable because the Gulf carriers have become such an important bridge between Australia and Europe. A journey from Melbourne to London can depend upon a functioning Middle Eastern hub thousands of kilometres from either destination.
The conflict also demonstrated something that travellers have perhaps been slow to appreciate: geopolitics is now part of the aviation map.
A war does not need to be taking place in the country you intend to visit to affect your travels. It only needs to close the airspace, threaten a major airport, increase the price of jet fuel or make an airline nervous about sending an aircraft through a particular corridor.
The Strait of Hormuz added another layer to the problem. As energy
prices surged, the consequences moved from aviation into the cost of everything from car hire to accommodation and food. For tourism-dependent countries in Southeast Asia, the problem was particularly painful. Thailand and Vietnam, for example, rely heavily on tourism, and rising fuel and aviation costs threatened to make long-haul holidays substantially more expensive.
And then there is the political map. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has created another fascinating shift in global travel patterns. The United States remains one of the world ' s great destinations, but its international tourism performance has increasingly diverged from the broader global recovery.
In 2025, international visitors to the US fell by about six per cent while global tourism continued to grow. The decline has continued into 2026, with overseas visitor arrivals in June down 1.8 per cent year-on-year despite the enormous tourism opportunity presented by the FIFA World Cup.
It is difficult to attribute such a complex phenomenon to one political decision. Exchange rates, prices, economic conditions and airline capacity all matter. But immigration policy, border restrictions, tariffs and the increasingly confrontational tone of American politics have undeniably become part of the travel conversation. Travellers don ' t merely ask, Where do I want to go?
we haven’ t stopped travelling... we’ ve simply become more selective about where, when and how we do it
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