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Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:

Recovery from Crisis

in the OIC Member Countries

126

changed, with Asia and theMiddle East generating 43.4%of arrivals in 2016. The principal regional

market is India, which since early in the current century has provided around half of all Asian

visitors, and many developments (for instance the golf courses) are designed to attract this

segment.

By the time of the tsunami the length of stay of European tourists was declining. This partly reflects

a general trend towards several shorter holidays throughout the year (facilitated by quicker

journey times and lower air-fares) and partly reflects the decline in Sri Lanka’s attractiveness to

European markets in comparison to other countries (e.g. Thailand and Malaysia) because of a

poorer quality offer and a failure to capitalise on evolving market trends, including less interest in

straightforward beach tourism. These aspects are illustrated by visitors’ average daily spend, which

at US$ 72.60 per person per day in 2004 was lower than in other comparable destinations (SLTB,

2006). This indicates that Sri Lanka was operating at the lower end of the mass long-haul market.

Recognition of these factors gave the stimulus for renewal in institutional structures as well as

markets and products. There was increased focus on the emerging source markets of Russia and

China and on the domestic market, as the middle-class expanded and people’s aspirations were

changing. Leisure movements within the country help to bolster the tourism economy and

redistribute wealth from urban to rural areas, and also represent a channel for foreign currency to

be redistributed through tourism: remittances from Sri Lankans working abroad contribute the

largest source of foreign exchange earnings and about 10% of GDP (Almeida, 2017), and many

newly prosperous members of the middle-classes are former migrant workers who return home

on vacation or to retire. The tourism industry recognised the importance of this market during the

tsunami and conflict crises, and created cut-price packages to encourage them. Many hotels rely on

spending by the domestic market, with weddings (particularly during the ‘wedding season’ in May

and June) forming an important niche sector. By 2012 tourism was contributing 5.2% of foreign

exchange earnings (SLDTA, 2012).

Perhaps surprisingly, recovery from the tsunami in terms of tourism arrivals was fairly swift, with

549,000 visitors in 2005, only slightly less than in the previous year (SLTB, 2006). This was partly

due to the proactive stance of the industry, with its “Bounce Back Sri Lanka” campaign (funded by

USAID) emphasising that most of the tourism infrastructure remained unharmed or had been

quickly reconstructed. The authorities had in effect put into practice well-established crisis

management techniques for communication and ‘managing themessage’ (as reviewed by Scott and

Laws, 2006). The emotional appeal to the sympathies of source market were successful in helping

recovery; generally, as Mc Kercher and Pine (2006) point out, destinations recover quite swiftly

from this kind of discrete, unpredictable event.

Had the tsunami been the only crisis incident the industry would most likely have continued to

show strong growth, but in 2006 and 2007 the security situation deteriorated again because of the

breakdown of peace negotiations and renewed terrorism activity. While still mainly contained in

the north and north-east, occasional bomb attacks in Colombo and in tourist-frequented areas such

as the international airport and theWorld Heritage Site of Galle, on the south coast, gave the conflict

an island-wide spread. Tourists were not directly targeted by the rebels, but the continuing