Contemporary Issues in Tourism Management

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- Floods

- Tsunamis

- Earthquakes

- Volcanic eruptions

- Wild fires

- Hurricanes

- Floods.

These above mentioned disasters take place very often in all parts of the world. They have caused a stunning tourist destination to lose some of its striking locations that tourists throng to visit. Hence it causes tourists to change their minds and visit a destination that is less prone to such disasters from taking place. Lack of preparedness for such disasters is what causes tourist to stop visiting a particular destination and choose alternatives instead. It is imperative that reaction places are in place so that such impending disasters can be dealt with in a better manner.

Political instability and War

Political instability is usually descriptive of a scenario when there are obstacles and challenges from the government’s point of view. It takes place when there is a description in the functioning of the political systems. It has been seen that terrorism and political instability cannot be related to one another. However war and political instability can have a connection with one another and when they are combined with one another they can give rise to the possibility of a terror attack to take place. Hence when all these three elements of war, terrorism and political instability are combined with one another it creates a great deal of havoc and damage for the tourism industry. They thus change the perception of tourists while travelling. In the year 1989 more than 12000 tourists cancelled their trip to Beijing because of the impact of the Tiananmen Square that is located in China (Picard and Robinson, 2006).

Epidemics

Health issues have always posed to be a deterrent for the tourism industry. As per research it has been seen that the tourism industry and the health epidemics are very closely related to one another. It has an impact on the satisfaction levels of the tourists that are visiting a particular place. For instant a person would certainly not want to visit a destination where malaria is a common occurrence (Racherla and Hu, 2009). As it will cause them to fall sick and their experience of a vacation will be ruined as well. An epidemic can have an adverse impact upon the tourism industry as the health and the safety in terms of food is compromised for the tourists. Since a large number of tourist travel daily there is a very chance of the epidemic to spread at a very rapid rate due to cross contamination. Walker conducted a research that stated that a health epidemic can cause an entire country to either be safe or to succumb to the disease (Walker, 2005).

New forms of crisis

The trends of the type of crisis that take place are also changing. There is an addition of crisis such as cyber related terrorism, health scare crisis that could include a deadly virus and also that pertaining to genetic reengineering. Such crisis is also responsible for giving rise to a problem that impacts the businesses that are related to the tourism industry. Cyber terrorism has become a raging crime these days. Here the terrorists make use of technology so that they can gain information from civilians. The most common type of devices that are used for this purpose is mostly the computers and the cellular communications. Thus those destinations that are at a high risk of impending cyber terrorism attacks are avoided by tourists thus having an impact on the decline in the number of people visiting a destination (Volo, 2014). Genetic reengineering is a rather new form of crisis where species are replicated that can have a devastating impact upon the bio diversity of a particular area.

2.0 Assessment of the way by which effective crisis management strategies can reduce the severity of the impacts on tourism businesses:

Natural hazards compose of various forms of tornados, volcanic eruptions, floods, tsunamis and earthquakes. There is a natural hazard that takes place at a very low rate that is known as deforestation. Slowly the number of trees and the natural resources are getting depleted because of this process of deforestation. The tourism industry has become much globalised due to the fact that the world has become easily accessible from all parts, hence when a natural disaster takes place it has a torpedoing effect on the tourism industry as well. If we look at the suggestions that have been given by walker, (2005) we can understand that some of the negative impacts that are created because of these disasters can be reduced to a great extent if the stakeholders are also made an important part of the tourism industry. This helps in being prepared to deal with crisis that can take place suddenly. The model of tourism that has been provided by Leiper has made all the important elements that a tourist would need to know about while travelling. The model has chosen to discuss all the aspects of tourism that pertain to the economy and the environment as well. Since, this plays a very important role when it comes to managing crisis. Once a crisis has taken place the entire tourism industry needs help to get back on to its feet and this can only be done if there is communication prevalent Most of the time it happens, that some services may not be available when tourism related crisis takes place (Volo, 2014).

Most of the organizations that support the tourism industry need to abide by the rules and regulations that are based on the concept of trust and that of reciprocity. The competitors are also needed at times so that they can come together as a team and provide the essentials that are needed so that the effected members of the tourism industry can be supported (Tchetchik, Fleischer and Finkelshtain, 2008).

Crisis management is a process that helps in development of organizational capabilities so that a crisis can be dealt with and can also be prevented from taking place. Each crisis scenario is different from one another as there are altered in the form of the intensity, the damages and the magnitude of the occurrence (Ritchie, 2009). Hence all the management strategies need to be decided well in advance so that the teams are ready with a plan in hand in case of such unforeseen events that can take place. This framework has been provided by walker, (2005)

There are various essential decisions that are taken before a disaster or a crisis takes place. This can be inclusive of the following: