Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:
Recovery from Crisis
in the OIC Member Countries
3
The UNWTO (2011) places tourism crises into five categories:
1. Environmental, including geological and extreme weather events, and human-induced
situations such as climate change and deforestation
2. Societal and political, including riots, crime waves, terrorist acts, human rights abuses,
coups, violently contested elections
3. Health-related, such as disease epidemics affecting humans or animals
4. Technological, including transportation accidents and IT system failures
5. Economic, such as major currency fluctuations and financial crises
In addition, specific events may affect individual businesses, such as
6. Accidents affecting clients in the public realm, e.g. traffic accidents, mugging, drowning
7. Accidents or events within an individual enterprise, e.g. fires, injuries, food poisoning
The tourism and hospitality industries of OIC member countries are vulnerable to the same types
of challenges as other countries. An analysis of crisis events in member states for this report
indicated that the most significant category is ‘societal and political’.
Any significant crisis in Categories 1-5 will affect the tourism sector’s ability to operate normally,
either because of damage to infrastructure and facilities, or because the destination will be
perceived as unsafe. The principal consequence of crises is a rapid decline in overall tourist arrivals
and occupancy levels for hotels, tour operators and airlines, due to:
 physical damage to tourism infrastructure (especially in the case of natural disasters)
 heightened perception of risk and erosion of consumer confidence (especially in the
case of terrorist attacks)
 decisions by consumers to cancel or postpone their trips
 removal by tour operators of holidays in affected countries from their brochures and
product listings
 decisions by airlines to reduce flights to affecteddestinations
These issues will result in a loss of jobs and a fall in the economic benefits of tourism, including
reduced incomes for businesses and individuals along the supply chain and loss of tax revenues for
governments, and (in the case of a crisis of longer duration) reduced investment in facilities.
Many disruptive events are limited to a relatively small geographic area within a country but
market concern about the safety of travel andnegative imagemay apply to thewhole country rather
than be limited to the specific area affected.