Health-Related Crises in Tourism Destination Management: History
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Subjects: Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism
Contributor:
Celeste Vong

Tourism is one of the world’s largest and most revenue-generating industries, being an essential tool for economic growth in most developing countries, yet highly vulnerable to disruptive events such as crises and disasters. Between 2000 - 2020, the tourism industry has witnessed a range of health-related crises, with the outbreak of COVID-19 bringing the industry to a standstill. 

  • tourism destination
  • health crises
  • crisis management

1. Introduction

Tourism is one of the world’s largest and most revenue-generating industries [1], being an essential tool for economic growth in most developing countries [2], yet highly vulnerable to disruptive events such as crises and disasters [3]. ‘Safety, security, and peace’ are the basic conditions for the normal operation of tourism businesses [4] (p. 1). Recent global crises and disasters, both natural and human-induced, such as terrorism, wars, epidemic diseases, natural disasters, political and economic issues, have indeed posed major challenges to the tourism industry worldwide [5]. Specifically, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to devastating social and economic consequences, including mobility restrictions, business closures, pay cuts and massive job losses in the global travel and tourism industry [6][7]. Although sustainable development has been a long-discussed issue in tourism, the unprecedented socio-economic impacts brought by the pandemic have led scholars and practitioners alike to question the sustainability of the industry [8][9].
To date, a great deal of research has been done on tourism crises and disasters [10], such as how destinations should respond proactively to crises and how to develop strategies to avoid or cope with the crisis in order to mitigate its impacts on destinations [11][12][13]. In terms of the types of crises, much research during the last two decades is concerned with terrorist attacks, natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes or various crises and disasters in general [14]. Undoubtedly, the outbreak of COVID-19 has drawn significant attention from tourism scholars across the world to understand the disastrous impacts on tourism [15][16]. This attention is probably due to the fact that the research on tourism crises is event-driven, which means the studies were often conducted promptly following the incidence of a particular crisis or disaster [17].
Several researchers have conducted reviews of the extant literature in the field to ensure the impacts of tourism crises and disasters are studied systematically. For example, Aliperti et al. [18] and Ritchie & Jiang [10] presented the current research focus, identified research gaps, and outlined a future research agenda. Estevão and Costa [19] looked at the types of natural disasters and their impacts, and outlined strategies developed and implemented by destination management organisations (DMOs). Duan et al. [17] analysed different types of crises and provided a structural understanding of their impacts.

2. Health-Related Crises in Tourism Destination Management

The health crisis events covered in the tourism literature were, by chronological order, Foot-and-Mouth Disease, SARS, Avian Flu, Ebola and COVID-19, and were closely related to the topic of pandemic, in which COVID-19 received the most scholarly attention. This attention may be attributed to the fact that articles on tourism crises are event-driven [17], and to the consequences and unprecedented impacts of COVID-19 on global tourism. Given that pandemics are a global issue, the collaboration among scholars from different countries is particularly important for generating new scientific knowledge and solutions.

Furthermore, different countries have different crisis recovery patterns [20], and international research collaborations may benefit from different environmental conditions across the world [21]. In addition, the impact of health crises on the tourism industry in developing countries can be more devastating than in developed ones due to their heavy reliance on tourism, and the recovery is even more challenging due to the limited financial resources [22]. Despite this, few studies have been conducted on tourism crisis management in developing countries. Therefore, more research collaborations between developed and developing countries are needed.

In tourism research on health-related crises, the findings reflect a shift of focus from how the tourism industry can respond to health-related crises effectively to how tourism can recover sustainably over time. Undoubtedly, sustainable tourism is the development trend of global tourism [23]. However, although issues related to sustainable tourism development have long been discussed in the extant literature, they are rarely attended to—for instance, climate change. Despite the increasing attention to climate change issues in tourism literature, the tourism industry has not sufficiently responded to the danger because its impact may not seem immediate, albeit posing a more significant threat to human life than disease crises [24]. Therefore, COVID-19 has provided opportunities for the tourism industry to rethink how they should recover and operate in the future and for tourism scholars to explore how the tourism industry may be transformed from the current model, that is driven by the ‘business-as-usual’ mindset [25], to a more sustainable tourism industry in which the public good and socio-ecological justice are concerned [26].

The expected impact of health crises on tourism is primarily manifested in the international tourism demand. This impact is mainly a result of different levels of nonpharmaceutical interventions imposed by governments across the world to contain the spread of infectious disease during a pandemic, including social distancing, crowd control, mobility and travel restrictions and quarantine requirements [8][27]. Moreover, disease outbreaks often adversely affect a destination’s image and competitiveness, and, accordingly, tourism demand [28], and such problem may be even amplified by the effect of media reporting on tourists’ risk perception [22]. In addition, disease outbreaks can cause changes in tourists’ behaviours and travel patterns [29][30]—for instance, the preference for domestic travel, short-distance travel and less populated destinations [31][32][33].
Comparing the impact of previous health crisis events and COVID-19 on tourism, this study suggests that the tourism industry is generally impacted by a decrease in international tourism demand during a disease outbreak. At the same time, the difference concerns the extent to which destinations are affected by this impact. This difference is particularly true—scholars Zenker & Kock [34] have noted that not all impacts of COVID-19 are worth researching, as existing theories pertinent to crises and disasters can often be used to explain and understand the current tourism phenomena.
Tourism crisis management are preparedness, proactive planning, contingency plans and response strategies in place essential to effective, because the primary goal is to prevent or mitigate the negative impacts on the destinations [22][28][35][36][37]. Meanwhile, the involvement of various stakeholders in decision-making and public-private collaboration is essential for pandemic response strategies and resilience-building [38][39][40][41].
During a disease outbreak, Destination Management Organisations (DMO) should play a leading role in crisis communications due to the presence of negative media coverage and the rapid dissemination of misinformation enabled by online social media [13][42][43][44]. Particularly at the early stage, accurate and up-to-date information should be delivered to visitors. In the medium term, marketing campaigns such as advertising and promotion may effectively generate positive media coverage. Finally, at the recovery stage, it is important to restore the destination’s image and provide information on the implementation of health and safety travel measures to reassure tourists, mitigate risk perceptions and rebuild their confidence in travelling [45][43][46][47][44][41][48].
Given tourists’ preference shift for closer and less populated destinations during a disease outbreak, DMO may consider a recovery strategy by reviving domestic tourism and promoting lesser-known places [49][31].
Last but not least, instead of returning to the past, the global tourism industry should rethink how post-pandemic tourism should operate as well as what changes should be made in practices and policies for a more resilient, equitable and sustainable system [49][50].
Overall, the existing research is limited in several aspects, and future work is required. First, what seems to be lacking is cross-continent research to evaluate previous health crises, impacts and consequences on the tourism industry worldwide. Moreover, research collaborations among scholars from different countries, particularly from developing and developed countries, is encouraged to offer different perspectives on such global issues. Second, the research focus shifted towards sustainable tourism warrants future research to explore how the tourism industry may transform towards a more sustainable path. Third, although a sharp increase is seen in the number of research on tourism health crises since the outbreak of COVID-19, there is still a lack of empirical studies to investigate the underlying effects of a health crisis on tourists’ decision-making and behaviour as well as the role of online social media, given its accelerated use during the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the influential papers identified are all authored by tourism scholars. A more interdisciplinary research, collaboratively conducted by scholars from health science and tourism fields, is required for understanding the complex issues of health crises in the tourism context.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su132413738

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