Girish Prayag1,2*- 1Department of Management, Marketing and Tourism, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
- 2School of Tourism and Hospitality, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa
Editorial on the Research Topic
UN world tourism day 2022: disaster/crisis management and resilience in tourism
The UN World Tourism Day 2022 collection of articles covers several facets of disaster or crisis management in tourism, with implications for risk management and resilience. The collection features articles covers global crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic but also more localized disasters such as earthquakes. The articles cover different regions of the world including South America, Asia, and Oceania, with an emerging consensus on the importance of risk communication for international visitors and the need for greater tourism stakeholder engagement in crisis/disaster planning, response, and recovery processes.
The article by Pennington-Gray and Basurto-Cedeno delves into the important topic of stakeholder engagement in boosting resilience outcomes for those involved in rural tourism in Ecuador. The authors focus on non-traditional tourism stakeholders and advocate for their inclusion in tourism planning processes. They provide empirical evidence that this approach improves connectivity between community and tourism, but also increases resilience. They highlight that effective communication builds trust and long-term alliances in building destination resilience. The article in a way confirms that social capital is an important asset that can be leveraged for resilience purposes. Building social infrastructure is as equally important as physical infrastructure (Aldrich and Meyer, 2015). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was largely on social relationships, and by strengthening those in the context of rural tourism, there is an opportunity to boost community resilience. The article also highlights the importance of community participatory approaches in tourism development (Tosun, 2006), requiring a shift from participation by consultation to more interactive participation that departs from a transactional approach to a relationship-focused approach.
The article by Choi et al. covers disaster preparedness from the perspective of international tourists largely from Asia that potentially could visit Japan. Using the Tokyo Metropolitan Earthquake Scenario as the foundation, they explore how different international tourists would respond to earthquake threats and evacuation procedures. Surprisingly, tourists with higher earthquake knowledge had a greater propensity to rely on themselves through their ability to gather information to make critical decisions. They tend to shift the locus of control to themselves. The paper offers a complementary perspective on tourists' decision-making processes during disasters (Çakar and Aykol, 2023). The criticality of prior knowledge in shaping potential responses from tourists and their perceived risks conforms to existing studies (e.g., Sharifpour et al., 2014).
Staying within the theme of risk communication and perceptions but offering the stakeholder perspective, Cui et al. examine the preparedness of stakeholders for natural hazard risks with a focus on those who target Chinese visitors to New Zealand. The article emphasizes the importance of communicating potential natural hazard risks to Chinese visitors as this can improve their safety. They found differences in levels of preparedness, responsibility for risk communication, and the most effective means to communicate those risks. Message format and content, thus, appear to be an important consideration in designing risk communication strategies for the Chinese visitor market. Increasingly, the use of technological tools has been advocated for improving disaster risk awareness and resilience (Latvakoski et al., 2022).
Prayag looks at the relationship between resilience and sustainability but notes several issues in how resilience has been framed in the tourism literature. The term itself is contentious and devoid of issues of fairness and inclusivity. He notes the absence of considerations of politics and power in framing the importance of resilience for communities and destinations involved in tourism. Though resilience is strongly advocated by various tourism institutions as a means to mitigate the impact of crises and disasters, not everyone wins in the process of building and sustaining resilience. The focus should remain on improving the sustainability of tourism organizations, communities, and destinations and part of the process can be resilience-building activities. While some (Becken and Kaur, 2021; Bellato et al., 2022) advocate for a shift to regenerative tourism following crises and disasters, the theoretical underpinnings of the term in relation to sustainability and resilience thinking remain on shaky grounds. Nonetheless, the integration of indigenous knowledge systems and practices in the conceptualization of regenerative tourism advances the much-needed debate on equity and inclusivity in resilience thinking.
In conclusion, the articles in this Research Topic provide a sounding board for those wishing to conduct further research on either the production and/or consumption of tourism as a phenomenon in times of crises and disasters.
Author contributions
GP: Writing—original draft.
Funding
The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Conflict of interest
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
The author(s) declared that they were an editorial board member of Frontiers, at the time of submission. This had no impact on the peer review process and the final decision.
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References
Aldrich, D. P., and Meyer, M. A. (2015). Social capital and community resilience. Am. Behav. Sci. 59, 254–269. doi: 10.1177/0002764214550299
Becken, S., and Kaur, J. (2021). Anchoring “tourism value” within a regenerative tourism paradigm–a government perspective. J. Sust. Tour. 30, 52–68. doi: 10.1080/09669582.2021.1990305
Bellato, L., Frantzeskaki, N., and Nygaard, C. A. (2022). Regenerative tourism: a conceptual framework leveraging theory and practice. Tour. Geograph. 12, 1–21. doi: 10.1080/14616688.2022.2044376
Çakar, K., and Aykol, S. (2023). The past of tourist behaviour in hospitality and tourism in difficult times: a systematic review of literature (1978–2020). Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manage. 35, 630–656. doi: 10.1108/IJCHM-12-2021-1475
Latvakoski, J., Öörni, R., Lusikka, T., and Keränen, J. (2022). Evaluation of emerging technological opportunities for improving risk awareness and resilience of vulnerable people in disasters. Int. J. Dis. Risk Reduc. 80, 103173. doi: 10.1016/j.ijdrr.2022.103173
Sharifpour, M., Walters, G., Ritchie, B. W., and Winter, C. (2014). Investigating the role of prior knowledge in tourist decision making: a structural equation model of risk perceptions and information search. J. Travel Res. 53, 307–322. doi: 10.1177/0047287513500390
Keywords: crisis management and communication, tourism resilience, disaster and risk management, sustainability, tourism stakeholder
Citation: Prayag G (2023) Editorial: UN world tourism day 2022: disaster/crisis management and resilience in tourism. Front. Sustain. Tour. 2:1305517. doi: 10.3389/frsut.2023.1305517
Received: 01 October 2023; Accepted: 11 October 2023;
Published: 31 October 2023.
Edited and reviewed by: Dimiter Velev, University of National and World Economy, Bulgaria
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*Correspondence: Girish Prayag, Z2lyaXNoLnByYXlhZyYjeDAwMDQwO2NhbnRlcmJ1cnkuYWMubno=