When Tourism has to face a Physical Crisis
August 2007
The coming decade promises to hold a number of challenges for the world’s tourism communities. If the scientists who predict global warming’s dire disasters prove to be correct, tourism will be impacted in a multiple ways. While it is impossible to predict which disaster may touch which tourism community, there are a number of principles that always hold true. This month’s Tourism Tidbits presents a number of general principles that apply to all tourism centers around the world.
List the physical risks to your geographic area and then develop a plan. For example, is your community close to a seacoast, or do you lie in a seismic region of the world? Al natural catastrophes have a great many things that are in common and need to be addressed by a tourism community before the event occurs. Here are some of them.
- Have an evacuation plan. This simple tourism rule is harder to implement than most people realize. Tourism often appeals to the adventure side of a human being. Our guests may seek to get lost for a while or not even give their real name. This means that finding people who are with us for only short periods of time and are transient by nature is no easy task. To further complicate the situation, these are people who may need medicines, who do not know the geographic area and most likely have no idea to where they should go in case of an emergency. Finally, while many large hotels will provide evacuation information, many of our guests stay in smaller hotels, bed ‘n breakfasts or in condos. In this case, informing these people or even knowing who they are may be a major task. Finally make sure that your evacuation plan is multi-lingual. Giving evacuation orders in a language not understood is the same as having no plan at all.
- Prepare personnel. Often evacuation plans do not take into consideration that personnel and employees are also human beings. If your personnel cannot get to the site, or chooses not to go to your site, or flees from the site then the best evacuation plans are now worthless. Consider how you are going to care not only for your visitors but also for your employees’ families.
- Train personnel and go over the evacuation plan with all staff members. In cases of emergency it is always surprising how easily any of us can panic. To prevent such staff panics make sure that your personnel know the rules of the plan. Do they stay inside a building or go outside the building? What should they do if they are in a vehicle? Do they know to ask their guests names, do they care cell phones and what do they do if the cell phone lines go down or become clogged?
- Develop checklists. During times of emergency most people may forget common and basic principles. The best way to assure that staff knows what to do is to provide overall checklists. These check lists can serve as reminders of the basic emergency actions and also act as a calming influence.
- Develop a post-crisis marketing plan now. The tourism industry’s first responsibility is to save lives and then property. After the crisis has passed, however other problems begin. For example, what type of post disaster marketing plan do you have? The public tends to be more forgiving of weather/physical related crises than it does of man-made crisis such as a terrorism attack. Each type of crisis may need a different recovery approach. Here are some ideas that may help you to recover.
- Make the media your ally, Invite them to view the disaster and then explain to the media what your recovery plan is. The sooner the media report that you have a recovery plan in place the faster your locale will recover from the economic impact of the disaster.
- As soon as you have begun the road to recovery make sure that the media know that you locale is open for business and that you want tourists to return. Do not, however give this message out before you are ready!
- Have a recovery incentive program ready. This recovery incentive program not only gives an upscale message but also encourages people to show solidarity with the local tourism industry. Push the concept that one way to show you care about the impacted locale is to visit it. Do not be afraid to use such phrases as: “We were a beautiful place to visit before the earthquake and your visit will ensure we remain a beautiful place to visit in the future.”
- Make sure that your crisis plan is known to your local first responders (fire, police and emergency medical services). During a disaster these people will have to worry about their own lives, their families’ lives, their community and the tourism industry’s guests. Each one of these groups will have a distinct set of needs. Remember that tourism may often be the lowest priority in many cases, so the tourism industry may have to rely on its own resource. Furthermore, hotels, stadiums and other places of gathering may become evacuation points for local residents.
- Make sure that your insurance policies take into account both business and recovery needs. After the shock of a disaster has gone, be prepared for the anger stage of recovery to set in. That means that no matter how well you prepare, law suites are liable to occur and people will begin to assign blame. You will need insurance to rebuild, to stay in business during the recovery stage, to help heal injured people (and administrators can also be injured), to pay for hospital expenses, to get visitors back home and even to deal with law suites. Review your insurance plan and make sure that it touches upon these and other contingencies.
