COMCEC Tourism Outlook 2017
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5 Risk and Crises Management the OIC Member Countries1
Tourism is highly vulnerable to internal and external shocks as diverse as economic downturns,
natural disasters, epidemic diseases, terror attacks and political conflicts. Although these have
become global issues, particularly OIC countries have suffered several of these events within
recent years with serious impacts on their tourism industry. Therefore, there is a need for solid
policies on measures that can be taken by OIC countries before (risk management), during
(response) and after (recovery) the crises.
Crises can be defined as an unexpected and disruptive event that threatens the existing business
operations (Avci et al., 2011). From the perspective of tourism; crises can be defined as an event
or a set of circumstances which might damage the reputation, sales and operations in a
destination and organizations within the tourism industry (PATA, 2011). Crises also require
various immediate actions, decisions and countermeasures based on the nature, extent and
duration of its consequences (UNWTO, 2011).
Crises that affect tourismmight be classified based on their origin and their impacts. Regarding
their origin; two broad categories can be identified. Internal crises might refer to incidents
originated from internal organizational human induced issues such as financial fraud, loss of
data, crime, food poisoning, fire, flood etc. resulted from deficiency within internal management.
External crises on the other hand refer to events that are beyond the control of immediate
management within the organization such as natural disasters, political conflicts, social unrest,
epidemics, acts of war and terrorism.
The impact of these events therefore might be immediate and long-lasting depending on type of
crises, its intensity, whether tourists were targeted or affected, which locations are involved, the
extend of infra-structural damage, time of the year, the scale and extent of media coverage, travel
warnings issued and so on. Contrary to major belief acts of terror have a relatively short term
impact whereas political unrest has a much more gradual impact and often lasts for a longer
time. Particularly safety and political stability have become prerequisites for tourism (ITB,
2015). Figure 1 displays recovery duration for various types of crises.
1 The 10th Meeting of the COMCEC Tourism Working Group will be held with the theme of Risk and Crises Management:
Recorey from Crises in the OIC Member Countries. Thus, the Tourism Outlook 2017 includes this section as an introductory
section for the meeting.