Emergency Management and Tourism Stakeholder Responses to Crises: A Global Survey

J Travel Res. 2017 Mar;56(3):299-316. doi: 10.1177/0047287516641516. Epub 2016 Aug 4.

Abstract

This article examines the contested area of the responsibility for destinations and tourists, within emergency settings. It incorporates a Delphi-Scenario technique to facilitate a structured discussion of emergency management for different destination stakeholders. The Delphi exercise engaged 123 senior international stakeholders, from 9 different industry sectors, across 34 countries to provide a global perspective. The study's principal focus is on the notion of emergency management, to identify the challenges that stakeholders would face within a disaster scenario. The exercise asked stakeholders to identify with whom the responsibility rests for 18 distinct disaster-related activities. The study proposes a responsibility allocation building-block framework that could help speed up the emergency management responses by "knowing who is going to do what" with a particular focus on dealing with international tourists as a community in a disaster zone.

Keywords: Delphi technique; business continuity; disaster; emergency management and policy; management theory; resilience.