Tourism Crisis and Disaster Management in the Asia-Pacific

Brent Ritchie, Kom Campiranon, Brent W Ritchie, Kom Campiranon

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781780643250
• eBook ISBN: 9781789244595
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

The Asia-Pacific area is notable as one of the fastest growing tourism regions and not surprisingly, tourism in this region has become the major driver of global tourism in general. Nonetheless, tourism industries in Asia Pacific has been challenged in recent years by a number of major crises and disasters including terrorism, outbreaks (e.g. SARS and Bird Flu), natural disasters (e.g. tsunamis, bushfires, flooding), and political crisis (e.g. protests and political instability).The aim of this book is to contribute to the understanding of crisis and disaster management generally, but with a specific focus on the Asia Pacific. With chapters contributed by international scholars and practitioners, this book discusses both the theoretical and practical approaches toward successful crisis and disaster management.

Part I Introduction

1	Major Themes and Perspectives

Brent W. Ritchie^1* and Kom Campiranon²

¹The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia; ²Dhurakij Pundit University, Bangkok, Thailand

^*E-mail: [email protected]

1.1 Introduction

The tourism industry is one of the most economically important industries worldwide, yet it is also one of the most susceptible and vulnerable to crises or disasters (Pforr, 2009). This is not only because many sectors of the tourism industry interact with each other but also because the tourism industry relies greatly on and is impacted by many external factors such as the currency exchange rate, the political situation, discretionary income, the environment and the weather (Cassedy, 1992; Okumus et al ., 2005; Pforr, 2009). The success of the tourism industry is also directly linked to its ability to offer tourists a perceived safe and pleasant place to visit (Breda and Costa, 2006). When crises or disasters take place, the tourism industry, tourists and the local community are affected (Mansfeld and Pizam, 2006), and such events can divert tourism flows away from not only a particular destination but also neighbouring regions or countries (Cavlek, 2002).

Ritchie (2009) notes an increasing number of disasters and crises that affect the tourism industry, ranging from natural to human-influenced incidents. In recent years the global tourism industry has experienced many crises and disasters including terrorist attacks, political instability, economic recession, biosecurity threats and natural disasters. Major disruptions to tourism flows as a result of crises have provided major challenges to the tourism industry in the last decade (Hooper, 2002; Henderson, 2003; Lyon and Worton, 2007), particularly in the Asia-Pacific.

This chapter first provides the context by defining and conceptualizing tourism crises and disasters and explaining why the Asia-Pacific was chosen for this book. It then outlines the aim of the book and provides a detailed overview of subsequent chapters before finishing with a short conclusion.

Conceptualizing tourism crises and disasters

Many of the features attributed to crises are equally applicable to disasters (Faulkner, 2001), and so confusion can occur with common overlaps between the two where a crisis may occur as a direct result of a disaster or vice versa. Kim and Lee (1998) use the two terms interchangeably, while Hills (1998) acknowledges that the boundary between natural and human-induced behaviour has blurred. Faulkner (2001) considers the principal distinction between what can be termed a ‘crisis’ and a ‘disaster’ to be the extent to which the situation is attributable to the organization itself, or can be described as originating from outside the organization. Thus a ‘crisis’ describes a situation ‘where the root cause of an event is, to some extent, self-inflicted through such problems as inept management structures and practices or a failure to adapt to change’, while a disaster can be defined as a situation ‘where an enterprise (or collection of enterprises in the case of a tourist destination) is confronted with sudden unpredictable catastrophic changes over which it has little control’ (Faulkner, 2001, p. 136). In a comprehensive review of crisis and disaster definitions, Scott and Laws (2005) concur with Faulkner’s (2001) definitions. Prideaux et al. (2003) also agree and suggest that a crisis is caused by lack of management planning, and therefore can be anticipated; a disaster, however, can only be responded to after the event and human involvement can only be reactive.

Faulkner (2001) suggests that to some degree crises are able to be controlled and are within the influence of managers, whereas disasters are often external and more unpredictable. As Prideaux et al. (2003, p. 478) suggest: ‘disasters can be described as unpredictable catastrophic change that can normally only be responded to after the event, either by deploying contingency plans already in place or through reactive response’. Hills (1998) suggests that from an emergency planning perspective disasters are sudden and overwhelming events, which occur for a limited duration in a distinct location. Although they may be limited by time and location it may take a significant amount of time after a disaster to recover, while some victims may never fully recover, if indeed they survive.

Crises and disasters are chaotic situations and illustrate the complex interrelationships between human and natural systems (Faulkner, 2001). Understanding the relationship between cause and effect and the implications of decisions and actions is a complicated process. Disasters or crises in other industries (e.g. agriculture, natural resources or manufacturing) could have an impact on the tourism system due to its interdependence and linkage with those industries or negative image associated with a particular destination. An oil spill or biosecurity threat can have a major impact on a tourist destination and enterprises. At an organizational level, triggers can also move a ‘simple disaster’ to a major disaster due to interactive complexity creating a chain reaction within an open system (Davies and Walters, 1998) through ‘escalation’ (Heath, 1995; Hills, 1998) and the ‘ripple effect’ (Heath, 1995; Robert and Lajtha, 2002).

An Asia-Pacific focus

This book focuses on the Asia-Pacific for two main reasons:

1. The region is growing significantly and is predicted to be the largest tourist region in the world in the future. By 2030, the Asia-Pacific is projected to welcome some 535 million arrivals (a 66% increase), and grow well in excess of other regions in the world (UNWTO, 2011). The economic growth in the Asia-Pacific will also depend on the economic activity of over half of the 4 billion global ‘consumer class’ found in emerging markets in the Asia-Pacific (McKinsey, 2012). According to Forbes (2011), by 2030 the market in this region will include 1.4 billion middle-class consumers who will spend more on travel as their incomes and purchasing power rise. By 2015 the greatest percentage share of the projected 1.8 billion global tourist arrivals (UNTWO, 2011) will be in emerging economies. This is expected to rise to an approximate 60% market share by 2030, with the Asia-Pacific having 30% of this share by 2030, up from 8% in 1980 (UNWTO, 2011). Not surprisingly, tourism in this region has become the major driver of global tourism in general.

2. Despite this growth, tourism industries in the Asia-Pacific have been challenged in recent years by a number of major crises and disasters including terrorism (e.g. the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001), outbreaks (e.g. Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and bird flu), natural disasters (e.g. tsunamis) and political crisis (e.g. protests and political instability). While exact figures on the impacts of such crises are difficult to gauge, falls in visitor demand and expenditure over these years have been noted as significant (Aktas and Gunlu, 2005; Laws et al., 2007). Documented examples from the tourism literature include:

• Flooding and tsunami (Faulkner and Vikulov, 2001; Reddy, 2005; Sharpley, 2000; Henderson, 2007).
• Earthquakes (Huang and Min, 2002).
• Bushfires (Armstrong and Ritchie, 2007; Cioccio and Michael, 2007).
• Biosecurity and disease with an emphasis on the impact of SARS in the Asia-Pacific (Chien and Law, 2003; Henderson and Ng, 2004; Au et al., 2005).
• Political instability such as the 2002 and 2005 terrorist attacks in Bali (Toh et al., 2004).
• Economic crises (Leiper and Hing, 1998).

1.2 Book Aim and Content

Aim

The aim of this book is to contribute a much deeper understanding of crisis and disaster management with a specific focus on the Asia-Pacific. Previous studies have argued that tourism crisis and disaster management research has a number of limitations (see Ritchie et al., 2014):

1. it tends to focus on the response and recovery stages of crises, and there is little focus on the prevention or preparedness/resolution stages;

2. it tends to be driven by case studies that focus on simply describing what has happened, and not necessarily on addressing important questions of ‘why’ or ‘how’; and

3. it tends to lack a theoretical or conceptual framework within which it can be positioned, and so tends to make minor contributions to theory and knowledge.

This book attempts to provide a deeper understanding of tourism crises and disasters by encouraging authors to do two specific things:

1. To ground their chapters explicitly in theories or concepts from the management and marketing fields (such as strategic management, human resource management, collaboration and networks, finance, economics, marketing, consumer behaviour, organizational behaviour, knowledge management, organizational learning).

2. To focus their chapters on a particular life cycle stage of a crisis or disaster. This is intended to help deepen our understanding of tourism crises and disasters and reduce the chance of overlap between sections of the book. The extent to which this has been achieved will be explored in the conclusions chapter.

Content

A crisis or disaster tends to have three or four key stages. Ritchie (2009) describes a pre-event stage followed by three steps:

• planning and preparedness activities before a crisis or disaster hits an organization;
• response to, or management of, a crisis or disaster as it occurs; and
• a final resolution to a new or improved state after the crisis or disaster is over.

The planning and preparedness stage, also called reduction and readiness in disaster management, has been suggested as important in improving a rapid response to tourism crises and disasters, yet limited research has been carried out on this stage of tourism crises and disasters.

This is also reflected in this book, with only five chapters focused on this stage. Based on organizational resilience concepts, Chapter 2 provides a novel framework for destination marketing organizations (DMOs) to develop organizational resilience to tourism crises and disasters. The new framework is tourism-centric, yet intentionally broad-based in order to accommodate DMOs in varying contexts and environments. One of the negative incidents that could occur in any tourist destination is a crime against tourists, which can create reputational damage. This issue is discussed in Chapter 3, which summarizes the relevant criminology theories in an effort to better understand what motivates individuals to commit crimes against tourists, and what communities can do to deter such a risk. By identifying these theories, Chapter 3 provides a more informed theory-based framework for tourism researchers to assess potential crime against tourists, and how such a risk and damage to a destination’s reputation can be minimized.

Chapter 4 investigates the relationships among the organizational factors (organization culture), crisis planning behaviour and perceived crisis preparedness. The chapter notes that organizational culture has an influence on the individual’s attitudes towards crisis planning. In turn, crisis planning affects the perceived level of crisis preparation. Clearly, organizational culture plays a key role at the crisis reduction stage, and organizational leaders must be ab...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Content
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Part I introduction
• Part II planning and preparedness
• Part III response and recovery
• Part IV resolution, learning and feedback
• Part V conclusion and future directions
• Index