Emergency Planning and Disaster Recovery in Malaysian Hospitality Industry

Abstract

The current study investigates the impact of several disasters and crises on Malaysian's hospitality and tourism industry. This study aims to review some attempts to investigate the impact of disasters, how emergency planning could mitigate these impacts, and how to recover from it. Furthermore, it will review the governmental statistics and Malaysia‘s growth rate during several man-made and natural disasters. This study evaluates the contribution of the Gross domestic product (GDP) in the Malaysian economy, then discusses its effects on tourist arrivals to Malaysia and analyse the occupancy rate during the disasters. The findings identify that hospitality and tourism sector in Malaysia has been affected by several natural and human made disasters. Most of the industry businesses reported a reactive preparedness rather than proactive emergency planning, with relying on the government planning to recover shortly from disasters. Strategies like increasing service quality, hotel renovation, tax reduction, cheap tour packages, and the important role of media should be used to recover from disasters. Unfortunately, emergency planning for the disaster has been a dereliction by industry key players.