Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:
Recovery from Crisis
in the OIC Member Countries
135
6.2.1. Risk and Pre-crisis Management
 Establishing a tourism-specific crisis management plan (by the tourism authorities)
which integrates with the national-level disaster preparedness planning.
 Ensuring enterprise-specific risk awareness and crisis management planning (by
individual businesses).
 Establishing good relations with media and travel trade representatives in order to
ensure good support in the event of a crisis.
 Good communications and relations between stakeholders, e.g. horizontal
communications between industry members and vertical communications between
government and industry.
6.2.2. Market-oriented Responses
 Setting up a centralised hotline in the immediate aftermath of a crisis to answer media/
travel trade / individual tourist enquiries. The responses and messages given via the
hotline must be consistent and truthful, since attempts to gloss over the truth or twist
the facts will be quickly uncovered by journalists and individual tourists.
 Familiarisation trips for journalists, bloggers and tour operators.
 Immediate refunds for people who wish not to visit the country in the light of the crisis;
offers of price reductions (for potential travellers) or accommodation upgrades (for
people already booked).
 Building the destination’s image through sponsorship; seeking and promoting ‘good
news’ or unusual stories; co-creation of destination image through visitor contributions,
especially through social media; funding bloggers to write about the country; engaging
PR agencies.
 Market diversification, especially appealing to less sensitive markets, for instance
regional markets which are more likely to understand the situation better, and/or other
Islamic countries by crisis-afflicted Islamic countries.
 Appeals to the resident population to holiday in-country.
 Increased budget for marketing, sometimes linked to a ‘Visit [name of country] Year’ or
a specific theme.
 In the mid to longer term, a thorough understanding of market trends helps to ensure a
speedier and more appropriate response to crisis.
6.2.3. Destination Responses
 Introduction of crisis or disaster management plans and action plans (if this was not
already in place), both at national level and local level and by the public sector and
individual businesses.
 Tax holidays or subsidies, reduction in costs such as landing fees or visa fees,
government grants to tourism businesses.