While the politics of international trade, especially with respect to commodities such as fuels, receives a significant amount of attention, partly because of its impacts on global and regional geopolitics, but also because of its flow-on effects on economic and environmental policy making, the politics of tourism are nowhere nearly as well considered. Nevertheless, the politics of international tourism are a vital dimension of world tourism, and government policy is an important determinant of the character and possibilities for expansion in global and regional tourism (Matthews 1978; Elliot 1983; Richter 1989; Butler & Suntikul 2010; Timothy & Kim 2015). Issues of political stability and political relations within and between states are also extremely important in determining the image of destinations in tourist-generating regions and, of course, the real and perceived safety of tourists (Hall 2005). A government's position on the role and appropriate nature of tourism is an important component of that government's foreign policy and is usually indicative of the ideological and economic alignment of the nation. However, it should also be noted that the dynamics and trajectories of tourism are not only affected by tourism policy but also by other policy areas (Bramwell & Lane 2013; Truong 2013). Indeed, Hall (2005) has suggested that policy making in areas such as the economy, especially exchange rate policy, employment law, and the environment, may be more important for what happens in tourism development than tourism policy, although this clearly depends on the policy mix in specific jurisdictions. For example, in discussing the role of tourism in negotiations on international trade in services and their implications for tourist mobility, Hall (2008: 50) argued,
it is extremely difficult to separate the tourism services policy arena from other policy areas related to such issues as migration or international trade in general … tourism policy per se only represents a very small proportion of the overall number of policy fields that affect tourism and for which decisions are made often with little consideration of the impacts on trade in tourism services.