Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:
Recovery from Crisis
in the OIC Member Countries
137
early in the year, during the peak tourismseason. On the other hand, the South African government
has received criticism from the private sector for imposing measures which stifle tourism growth,
in particular the recent introduction of onerous visa requirements for visitors from important
source markets.
At all stages of the tourism system cycle or the crisis management plan, there may be inputs from
donor agencies or large NGOs, especially international NGOs. A wide range of agencies supported
countries affected by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004; for instance the Stockholm Environment
Institute funded a comparative study of tourism resilience in Thailand and Sri Lanka (Calgaro and
Cochrane, 2009), and in 2014 the US Agency for International Development funded a crisis
management and communications plan for Aqaba, in Jordan. This focused on the ‘4 R’s’ of effective
tourism crisis management: Reduction, Readiness, Response, Recovery. These echo the six phases
of tourism crisis planning as previously discussed, i.e. Pre-crisis; Prodromal; Emergency;
Intermediate recovery; Mid-term and Long-term recovery; and Resolution. These aspects will be
covered below.
6.3.1. Pre-Crisis Contingency Planning
In the first place, the lead government agency for tourismmust work closelywith other government
departments to ensure that policies and action plans for disaster management include tourism as a
key part of the Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) or Disaster Risk Management (DRM) strategy. As
pointed out in Section 2, the UNWTO recommends that tourism crisis management systems should
be fully integrated within national and local DRR and DRM strategies at national and local level.
Essential steps at this stage are:
 Recognition of the potential risks to the tourism industry overall and to individual
businesses.
 Identification of the particular threats most likely to occur, depending on the prevailing
political and geographic characteristics: for instance, is the country in a zone prone to
earthquakes? Are there separatist movements which may mount terror attacks targeting
tourists? Different crisis management plans will need to be prepared for different
scenarios.
 Establishing a tourism crisis recovery task force or crisis unit, with clearly designated roles
and responsibilities. This unit is likely to have representatives from different government
agencies (especially security and foreign offices). For example, the Tourism Authority of
Thailand, which is highly experienced at dealingwith different types of crisis, has a Tourism
Intelligence Unit and Crisis Management Center. There should be frequent reviews of the
roles and frequent meetings to discuss the plan.
 Designation of a location or institution which will become the Crisis HQ in the event of an
emergency incident.
 Thorough and up-to-date market research to understand the reaction of different markets
and categories to different types of crisis event, and to identify emerging trends and
markets so that in the event of a crisis, appropriate markets can be quickly targeted.