Tourism crisis and management strategies

Abstract

Any unexpected, highly important and potentially disruptive event observed by managers and stakeholders that can jeopardize an organization’s goals is known as an organizational crisis. (Bundy and Pfarrer, 2016). Timothy and Laufer in 2018 cited that examples of some of the biggest crises incurred at the world level were “Kobe Steel falsifying metal quality reports, the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, the oil spill in the Gulf by BP, sudden acceleration in Toyota cars, and people becoming seriously ill after using Vioxx, a prescription drug manufactured by the American multinational Merck”. The entire crisis impacted all the sectors gradually, one of them was the global tourism industry, which was always highly susceptible to a wide range of crises that happened in the past. Not only did the COVID-19 pandemic impact the industry as a whole but also past events like the terrorist attacks on September 11, the outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), the global economic crisis and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) made the industry more vulnerable. Terrorism, economic crisis and pandemics always stagnated the growth trends in the tourism industry in terms of reduced arrivals of tourists (Scott and Hall, 2020). Not only the aforementioned events made the industry disruptive but also some natural events like volcanic eruptions (Iceland in 2010), tsunamis (Southeast Asia in 2004 and Japan in 2011) and earthquakes impacted this industry massively. According to the study by Scott and Gossling (2015), the global tourism industry would likely be affected mostly by five main factors human, geopolitical, economic, technological and environmental in the future.