ABSTRACT
As a sector, tourism has repeatedly demonstrated sensitivity to disruptions to the political, economic, military and cultural affairs of nations. Surprisingly, few tourism scholars have conducted research into methods and frameworks that allow ordered and measured responses to disasters and crises (Prideaux and Master, 2001). From a theoretical perspective, Faulkner (2001) explored a number of issues associated with the impact of unexpected events on the tourism industry and, finding that existing models (for example, Cassedy, 1991; Drabek, 1995) failed to provide an effective conceptual framework for responding to tourism crises and disasters, developed the Tourism Disaster Management Framework (TDMF). While Faulkner’s framework offers a significant advance over previous models, the only test of the framework to date has been its application to a relatively small scale disaster. Although the TDMF has significant operational capability, adaptability to specific types of disasters and inbuilt flexibility, the need for adapting the framework as a management tool for large scale crisis and disasters has not been previously addressed.
