ABSTRACT
In recent years the global tourism industry has experienced many crises and disasters including terrorist attacks, political instability, economic recession, biosecurity threats and natural disasters (Faulkner 2001). For example, Lee and Harrald (1999, 184) state that ‘natural disasters can disrupt the supply and distribution chains for even the best prepared businesses … service businesses are increasingly vulnerable to electrical, communication and other critical infrastructure failures’. This vulnerability can also be exposed through human induced incidents most evident by the terrorist attacks in New York on 11September 2001 and the Bali bombings, which dramatically impacted upon the tourism and travel industry (Blake and Sinclair 2003; Gurtner 2006; Toh et al. 2004). Ritchie (2004) and Faulkner (2001) argue that there is a lack of research on crisis or disaster phenomena in the tourism industry, on the impacts of such events on both the industry and specific organisations, and the responses of the tourism industry to such incidents. However, increased recognition of disaster management, recovery, and organisational continuity because of crisis events has led to more recent tourism crisis management research (see, for instance, Alan et al. 2006; Evans and Elphick 2005; Hystad and Keller 2006, 2007; Meheux and Parker 2006).
