London(CNN) The Mediterranean has long evoked images of azure waters, warm weather and relaxation at reasonable prices. But that idyllic picture is beginning to darken, with plane crashes, terror attacks on the beach and refugee deaths at sea now blighting the region.
The EgyptAir flight that vanished early Thursday is just the latest of troubles to hit the countries surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, many reliant on tourism as the backbone of their economies.
Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia have become popular tourism destinations for European travelers looking for something cheap and exotic.
Resorts such as Sousse, Tunisia; Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt; and Turkey's Bodrum Peninsula were transformed into sun-and-sand hubs, but they have all suffered as the Syria conflict appears to be spreading beyond its borders.
"The impact on those resorts has been disastrous in my view," Sean Tipton, spokesman for the Association of British Travel Agents, told CNN.
In June, 38 tourists were gunned down on the beach in Sousse, 30 of them British.
The British Foreign Office has advised its citizens not to travel to Sousse, meaning accredited tour operators will not sell tickets and packages to tourists. And in Britain, where about 50% of tourists book vacations in packages, the government advice has had an enormous impact.
"That warning means that no packages to Sousse are being sold in Britain, so numbers from the UK to Sousse went from hundreds of thousands to zero over a very short time," Tipton said.
"Sousse was also very popular with French tourists, and they are easily turned off when these events happen because they can just go to a beach in the south of their own country."
More: Families of EgyptAir passengers wait in anguish
Thursday's disappearance of EgyptAir Flight 804 is the second aviation disaster for Egypt in recent months. A bomb tore through a Russian airliner in October just after it left the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board in an attack claimed by ISIS.
EgyptAir missing flight timeline
Tourism accounts for about 11% of Egypt's gross domestic product and supports about 11% of all jobs in the country, either directly or indirectly, according to the World Travel and Tourism Council.
Can Egyptian tourism survive another airline disaster?
Search underway in EgyptAir MS804 crash
Egyptian armed forces release video and images of debris, including personal belongings, believed to be from EgyptAir Flight 804 on Saturday, May 21. The
Airbus A320 vanished from radar over the Mediterranean Sea while en route from Paris to Cairo on Thursday, May 19, with 66 people aboard.
At least one piece of debris has an EgyptAir logo.
An uninflated life vest is among the debris recovered from the Mediterranean.
Debris from EgyptAir flight 804.
A piece of the wreckage from EgyptAir flight 804 is seen.
Samir Abdel Bary, imam of Cairo's al Thawrah Mosque, consoles Tarek Abu Laban, who had four relatives on the flight, on Friday, May 20.
A relative of a passenger who was on the jet waits for news at Cairo International Airport on May 19.
Relatives of passengers comfort each other at Cairo International Airport on May 19.
Relatives outside the crisis center at Cairo International Airport in Egypt.
The EgyptAir in-flight service building in Cairo has been turned into a crisis center. Families have been provided with doctors and translators, the airline said.
Egyptian Minister of Civil Aviation Sherif Fathi holds a press conference on the missing plane.
A relative is escorted at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport.
According to EgyptAir, there were 30 Egyptians, 15 French, 2 Canadians, 2 Iraqis, 1 Kuwaiti, 1 Saudi, 1 Chadian, 1 Portuguese, 1 Algerian, and 1 Sudanese, 1 Belgian, and 1 British-Australian dual citizen on board. There were also 10 crew members.
Shares in British-based travel giant Thomas Cook dropped to its lowest price in three years Thursday after it reported modest earnings, with bookings for the summer down 5% as interest in Turkey wanes.
Thomas Cook CEO Peter Fankhauser said that "demand for Turkey -- our second largest market last year -- remains significantly below last year's levels."
Thomas Cook has also lost significant bookings to Egypt, with Sharm el-Sheikh being its main destination for British tourists. It saw a decrease in sales to Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia worth £132 million ($192 million). It is making up for the shortfall by refocusing on Spain, the United States, Cuba and Mexico.
The October attack in Egypt prompted the British government to ban its airliners from flying in and out of the resort as the local airport came under intense scrutiny, with the question of how an explosive made its way on board still unanswered.
Political unrest still haunts the eastern Mediterranean following the Arab Spring, which has left pockets of power vacuums and has allowed ISIS to find a Libyan stronghold in the coastal town of Sirte, where hotels sit empty.
Europe's migration crisis in 25 photos
A woman cries
after being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea about 15 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, on July 25, 2017. More than 6,600 migrants and refugees entered Europe by sea in January 2018,
according to the UN migration agency, and more than 240 people died on the Mediterranean Sea during that month.
Refugees and migrants get off a fishing boat at the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey in October 2015.
Migrants step over dead bodies while being rescued in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Libya in October 2016. Agence France-Presse photographer Aris Messinis
was on a Spanish rescue boat that encountered several crowded migrant boats. Messinis said the rescuers counted 29 dead bodies -- 10 men and 19 women, all between 20 and 30 years old. "I've (seen) in my career a lot of death," he said. "I cover war zones, conflict and everything. I see a lot of death and suffering, but this is something different. Completely different."
Authorities stand near the body of 2-year-old Alan Kurdi on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey, in September 2015. Alan, his brother and their mother
drowned while fleeing Syria. This photo was shared around the world, often with a Turkish hashtag that means "Flotsam of Humanity."
Migrants board a train at Keleti station in Budapest, Hungary, after the station was reopened in September 2015.
Children cry as migrants in Greece try to break through a police cordon to cross into Macedonia in August 2015. Thousands of migrants -- most of them fleeing Syria's bitter conflict -- were stranded in a
no-man's land on the border.
The Kusadasi Ilgun, a sunken 20-foot boat, lies in waters off the Greek island of Samos in November 2016.
Migrants bathe outside near a makeshift shelter in an abandoned warehouse in Subotica, Serbia, in January 2017.
A police officer in Calais, France, tries to prevent migrants from heading for the Channel Tunnel to England in June 2015.
A migrant walks past a burning shack in the southern part of the "Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, France, in March 2016. Part of the camp was being demolished -- and the inhabitants relocated -- in response to unsanitary conditions at the site.
Migrants stumble as they cross a river north of Idomeni, Greece, attempting to reach Macedonia on a route that would bypass the border-control fence in March 2016.
In September 2015, an excavator dumps life vests that were previously used by migrants on the Greek island of Lesbos.
The Turkish coast guard helps refugees near Aydin, Turkey, after their boat toppled en route to Greece in January 2016.
A woman sits with children around a fire at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni in March 2016.
A column of migrants moves along a path between farm fields in Rigonce, Slovenia, in October 2015.
A ship crowded with migrants
flips onto its side in May 2016 as an Italian navy ship approaches off the coast of Libya. Passengers had rushed to the port side, a shift in weight that proved too much. Five people died and more than 500 were rescued.
Refugees break through a barbed-wire fence on the Greece-Macedonia border in February 2016, as tensions boiled over regarding new travel restrictions into Europe.
Policemen try to disperse hundreds of migrants by spraying them with fire extinguishers during a registration procedure in Kos, Greece, in August 2015.
A member of the humanitarian organization Sea-Watch holds a migrant baby who drowned following the capsizing of a boat off Libya in May 2016.
A migrant in Gevgelija, Macedonia, tries to sneak onto a train bound for Serbia in August 2015.
Migrants, most of them from Eritrea, jump into the Mediterranean from a crowded wooden boat during a rescue operation about 13 miles north of Sabratha, Libya, in August 2016.
Refugees rescued off the Libyan coast get their first sight of Sardinia as they sail in the Mediterranean Sea toward Cagliari, Italy, in September 2015.
Local residents and rescue workers help migrants from the sea after a boat carrying them sank off the island of Rhodes, Greece, in April 2015.
Investigators in Burgenland, Austria, inspect an abandoned truck that contained the bodies of refugees who died of suffocation in August 2015. The 71 victims -- most likely
fleeing war-ravaged Syria -- were 60 men, eight women and three children.
The Mediterranean has struggled to deal with the flow of refugees from the Middle East and Africa, who cram on small boats from Libya and Turkey to reach EU countries, with thousands tragically drowning in the very sea that has been the setting for so many holidays.
Tourists on Greek islands such as Kos and Lesbos have found themselves face to face with Syrian refugees, and while many have lent a hand in helping during the crisis, the number of people visiting the islands has dropped.
This is bad news for Greece, still reeling from a years-long economic crisis with some economists forecasting a need for a fourth injection of funds from the EU and international creditors to keep the economy afloat.
But not all the Mediterranean is at a loss. Tourists who had plans to visit the east are shifting to parts of the western Mediterranean, such as Spain and southern France, where resorts are fully booked.
"We're seeing operators try to encourage tourists to go to other parts of the region, like Cape Verde and the Canary Islands, as an alternative to places that are seen as unsafe or that are expected to be extremely crowded," Tipton said.