Destination Crisis & Disaster Management on the Web: Lessons from Iceland, Greece, Thailand & the Gulf Coast.

[Manolis Psarros]

The tourism industry is arguably one of the most important sources of
income and foreign exchange for the global economy. However, national
and international crises have huge negative economic consequences since
tourism is especially vulnerable to crises & disasters and, being
fragmented, often its response is difficult to initiate and coordinate.
Tourism is also information intensive and when in crisis its information
needs are increased. Destinations are extremely vulnerable to public
perceptions of health and safety and need knowledge for responding
successfully though effective response, recovery, and resilience
strategies.

To this direction, social media have already proven their value to many destinations, not only to promote some of the world’s most popular tourism campaigns, but also as a
powerful tool in their toolbox when dealing with a crisis.

Surprisingly few destinations, however, have included social media into their strategic communication frameworks – even those that have sophisticated crisis management protocols in
place.

With the scale and abundance of recent crises, effective response through social media has become a highly topical issue within the tourism industry. However, while leading DMOs,
industry bodies and destination marketing professionals advocate the
introduction of digital media into risk/crisis management strategies as a
means to better respond against adversity – the operational capacity
and efficient reaction of any destination is only truly determined in
conditions of pressure.

The experience of recently crisis badly affected destinations such as Thailand, Greece, Iceland and the Gulf Coast provide an opportunity to examine destinations’ social media
response strategies and the common objective of destination brand
recovery.

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