Crisis Management in the Tourism Industry

The assignment delves into the crucial role of strategic crisis management in ensuring sustainable development within the tourism industry. It highlights the increasing importance of this topic due to events like terrorist attacks and natural disasters, emphasizing the need for robust security measures and effective response plans. The text examines various studies and perspectives on crisis management in tourism, advocating for continuous improvement and collaboration between governments and tourism organizations to create a safer and more resilient industry.

Running head: HOTEL AND TOURISM ISSUES
Hotel and Tourism issues
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Ritchie, B.W. and Campiranon, K. eds., 2014. Tourism Crisis and Disaster Management in the
Asia-Pacific (Vol. 1). CABI............................................................................................................2
Scarpino, M.R. and Gretzel, U., 2014. Conceptualizing organizational resilience in tourism crisis
management. Tourism crisis and disaster management in the Asia-Pacific, 1, p.15......................3
Williams, A.M. and Baláž, V., 2015. Tourism risk and uncertainty: Theoretical
reflections. Journal of Travel Research, 54(3), pp.271-287............................................................4
Mikulić, J., Miloš Sprčić, D., Holiček, H. and Prebežac, D. (2018). Strategic crisis management
in tourism: An application of integrated risk management principles to the Croatian tourism
industry............................................................................................................................................5
Bibliography....................................................................................................................................7

2HOTEL AND TOURISM ISSUES
Ritchie, B.W. and Campiranon, K. eds., 2014. Tourism Crisis and Disaster Management in
the Asia-Pacific (Vol. 1). CABI.
In today’s world, the tourism industry is currently one of the major economically sound
industries throughout the world. The industry currently is exposed and vulnerable in front of
various disasters and crises. This is because the hotel and tourism industry immensely depends
on various external factors like political situation, the environment, discretionary income,
currency exchange rate and many more. It can be said that the success of tourism industry is
directly associated with the ability to provide a safe and pleasant premises to the tourists. When
elements of disasters and crises take place in hospitality and tourism industry, the local
community and the tourists gets majorly affected. These undesired events divert the flows of the
tourism from not only that particular area, but from the neighboring regions or from the country.
Nowadays, the increasing number of crises and disasters that are negatively affecting the
industry varies from human influenced to natural incidents. Recently, it is seen that the global
tourism has witnessed various crises including numerous attacks by the terrorists, economic
instability, global recession, natural disasters and chemical or bio threats. There are various
features that can be attributed to the disasters are generally applicable to various disasters and
thus confusion may arise with shared overlaps between the two, where crisis might occur as a
unswerving result of a disaster. These two particular terms can be used interchangeably and can
be acknowledged that the in between the boundary among human induced and natural behavior
is blurred. The major difference between disaster and crisis can be attributed to the organization
itself, or it can also be explained as something that originated from outside the organization. the
particular term crisis explains the situation where the main reason behind an event is somewhat
self-inflected by such issues as inept management structures and practices to adapt to changes.

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On the other hand, disaster can be explained as a situation where an organization is confronted
with some catastrophic changes over which it has some control. In this regard, it can also be said
that in most cases crisis originates from lack of planning by the management of the organization
and thus it can be surely anticipated. On the other hand, disaster is the generally responded to
after an event, or when human involvement can be reactive.
Scarpino, M.R. and Gretzel, U., 2014. Conceptualizing organizational resilience in tourism
crisis management. Tourism crisis and disaster management in the Asia-Pacific, 1, p.15.
Organizational resilience rightly addresses the requirement of the organizations to fight
the disruptions regarding contemporary disaster and crisis ridden environment. On the other
hand, it can be said that Organizational resilience is the capability of the organizations to survive
the crises. In this context, it is worth mentioning that that resilience actually determines the
ability of the system of the tourism organization to absorb various shocks and changes; and
stability can be explained as the capacity of the systems to return to a state if symmetry or
equilibrium following the elements of disturbance. Various studies proved that communities
depend on the tourism and hospitality organizations to plan, respond to and recover from various
disturbances in order to incessantly host critical and luxury services.
In accordance to early management theory, the tourism organizations were seemed to be
relatively stable, but when a massive change in the environment was seen it was often seen as a
coping with a steady change rather than with sudden changes that can test the institution’s
capability to cope. Thus, it can be said that the organizations are generally known to respond to
various disruption and uncertainty in various ways while portraying varying levels of resilience.

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Since last decade, it has been seen that the disasters and crises has increased in an
alarming rate in tourism and hospitality industry due to various reasons. The challenges
originated from various disasters and crises have compelled the tourism organizations to manage
the situation in a better and scientific way. The managements of these types of organizations
should take precautions to fight these sorts of oddities in order to secure the lives of the
employees and the visitors. In a competitive market, if the management of a tourism organization
fails to secure the safety issues of the visitors, it would potentially ruin the tourism business of
that particular region.
Williams, A.M. and Baláž, V., 2015. Tourism risk and uncertainty: Theoretical
reflections. Journal of Travel Research, 54(3), pp.271-287.
Analyzing the risks in tourism and hospitality industry is fragmented and uneven, it sheds
light relatively narrowly on the risk factors as a set of negative results to be avoided by the
individuals, organizations and destinations. The purpose of this journal is to highlight the sector
specific systematic and unsystematic risk factors that are central to all types of tourism activities.
A strong need for theoretical understanding regarding the various ideas regarding the risks and
uncertainties in tourism; that engages with how these can be manifested in different other scales,
and be analyzed from competing perspectives. The potential and contribution of both
constructive and rationalist approach should be evaluated while keeping the focus on tourism
organizations, individuals, destinations and intermediaries. This particular journal also identifies
the scale-specific issues that range from decisions taken by the individuals to the securitization of
various national policies. In today’s world, it is important to secure the loopholes that can bring
in several disasters and crises for the tourism organization along with the visitors and employees
of the organizations. It is seen that in today’s world, there are som much threats from the crises

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which are totally human induced and the managements of the tourism organizations should keep
in mind that they need to have proper infrastructure and planning to try to prevent those
unwanted incidents. Nowadays it is seen that due to unprofessionalism of some of the WHS team
members, some undesired things take place and those are not at all justified. To fight these
oddities, the managements of the tourism organizations should take proper actions to keep things
in order and controllable. The managements of these organizations should deploy a team
dedicated for the hazard and crisis management for best results. The team would get engaged in
identifying and reporting the hazardous elements within the premises of the organizations;
making it easier for the government to keep things in order. Thus it can be said that there are a
lot of space for improvements in this regard worldwide and the managements of the tourism and
hospitality organizations should stress on these factors.
Mikulić, J., Miloš Sprčić, D., Holiček, H. and Prebežac, D. (2018). Strategic crisis
management in tourism: An application of integrated risk management principles to the
Croatian tourism industry.
The strategic management of disasters and crises is seen as a major ingredient to manage
a sustainable development for the tourism industry. The contemporary studies regarding this
issue have highlighted various notions and agendas regarding the disasters and crises
management in tourism industry. In today’s world, this topic has gained much attention because
of the undesired events that took place earlier, like beach massacre in Port El Kantaoui, steady
rise and destructive activities of terrorist groups and above all reluctance of individuals to make a
secured stress management plan for the industry. Nowadays the governments of many countries
are making new policies in this regard, compelling the managements of tourism organizations to
take proper actions to prevent and effectively manage disastrous events within the premises of

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the organization. The present scenario does not permit the managements to show any kinds of
reluctance in this regard as that can potentially endanger the lives of innumerable individuals at a
stretch. It is a matter of fact that currently in this ever-changing world, the tourism industry is
facing immense challenges and threats that leads to extreme situations, crises and emergency.
Therefore, these types of disasters are leaving a long lasting impact on the tourism industry and
potentially reducing the revenues generated from tourism and hospitality business. Thus in recent
years studies regarding this issue have gained immense popularity. It has been noticed that due to
various terrorist attacks, the industry is facing some huge challenges and that is ruining the
profitability of the industry and that is making the situation concerning. The managements of the
tourism and hospitality organizations thus should spend some time and money to make the
security system better and effective so that they at least prevent the damages to some extent.
There should be proper procedure to measure the level of performance of the team members of
the Crisis management team of the tourism organizations. the managements should incessantly
try to improve the security systems in order to avoid any types of undesired situations and then
only the overall tourism industry would benefit. The visitors should think that the managements
of the tourism organizations are capable enough to secure their safety and then only the industry
would be able to bounce back and generate profitability like before.

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Bibliography
Mikulić, J., Miloš Sprčić, D., Holiček, H. and Prebežac, D. (2018). Strategic crisis management
in tourism: An application of integrated risk management principles to the Croatian tourism
industry.
Ritchie, B.W. and Campiranon, K. eds., 2014. Tourism Crisis and Disaster Management in the
Asia-Pacific (Vol. 1). CABI.
Scarpino, M.R. and Gretzel, U., 2014. Conceptualizing organizational resilience in tourism crisis
management. Tourism crisis and disaster management in the Asia-Pacific, 1, p.15.
Williams, A.M. and Baláž, V., 2015. Tourism risk and uncertainty: Theoretical
reflections. Journal of Travel Research, 54(3), pp.271-287.
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