ABSTRACT
Tourism in all destinations is highly susceptible to being influenced, often negatively, by external factors. The COVID-19 pandemic and its disastrous impacts on world travel and tourism were a stark reminder of this assertion. Chapter 10 reviews different types of crises and disasters that can affect world tourism cities and discusses a number of crisis management approaches that can be adopted by these destinations to limit the impact of such events. Special attention is given to the unprecedented situation created by the coronavirus crisis and how city destinations were affected.
An important challenge of crisis management is to ensure effective communication with all stakeholders in a destination, both internal and external. Therefore, crisis communication is a vital part when dealing with crises and disasters, with accurate and timely data needed to be provided to those affected. The new developments in technology and the social media revolution have transformed how destinations communicate and interact with their stakeholders, including visitors. This has brought many opportunities, but also significant challenges for city destination management organisations, which have had to quickly learn how to manage the influx of information posted on social media platforms. These, together with other important aspects related to crises and disasters, are discussed in this chapter, with examples provided from different parts of the world.
