Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:
Recovery from Crisis
in the OIC Member Countries
48
between the destination and source market operators may include advertising campaigns or
subsidies for brochure costs or website enhancements.
In addition, private enterprises will need to create savings by measures such as creating greater
efficiencies such as reducing outgoings. Adifficult area to address is how to reduce staff costs, which
may need to be done by reducing hours or by laying people off completely.
2.3.4. Post-crisis Recovery
The intermediate stages of crisis management will evolve gradually into longer term measures.
These fall under the following headings:
1. Infrastructural Development
2. Investment Climate
3. Human Resource Development
4. Image Rebuilding and Repositioning
5. Market and Product Diversification
1. Infrastructural Development
In addition to effecting the necessary repairs to infrastructure damaged during the crisis, it is
important for destinations to maintain their plans for new and improved infrastructure as this
provides the basis for the future expansion of tourism, demonstrates public sector commitment to
tourism, and provides confidence to tourist markets, international and local travel trades and
prospective investors (both in tourism and other economic sectors).
2. Investment Climate
Apart from providing reassurance of the country’s return to normal tourism operations by
pressing ahead with its own infrastructural development plans, governments of crisis-hit
countries can adjust investment conditions by offering various forms of fiscal and other
incentives to influence decisions on the scale and timing of future investments. This may be done
on a national level to stimulate all businesses, rather than on a sector-specific basis. The Turkish
government has engaged in various forms of direct and indirect subsidies to the tourism
industry since 2016, including tax holidays on ground rent and payment of employee wages. For
instance, in 2009, the US government passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to
cut taxes and increase public spending in order to stimulate recovery from the global financial
crisis (Zandi, 2013).
The strategy does not always work, however. After an earthquake in 2010 that killed tens of
thousands of people and severe tropical storms in 2012, efforts by the Haitian government to
reassure the global business World that Haiti was ‘open for business’ (such as rebuilding the
airport and lowering taxes) have not borne fruit, mainly because of the weak context of poor
social stability, lack of employability capacity amongst local people, and poor infrastructure