Tourism Crisis Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Tourism Crisis Management - Essay ExampleMany authors have act to give meaning to the word crisis or crisis management and consequently come up with synonymous terms to the crisis (e.g. Pender & Sharply, 2004 Faulkner, 2001 Prideaux et al., 2003 Pizam, 1999 Glaesser, 2003). Prominent examples, for instance, are a catastrophe, turning point, disaster, chaos, vulnerability, security. This revolution of terminologies considered, it is apparent that crisis definitional approach is a difficult undertaking. With reference to PATA (2003), a crisis is defined as A circumstance that holds the potential to have a long-term effect, liaison on the confidence in a product or an organization, or rather a situation that may alter the ability of an organization or product in resuming normal operations.Other authors provide vague sentiments on the term. For instance Ritchie et al. (2004 202), who bluntly indicates that a crisis is indefinite, freakish, unexpected and can be numerous. On the other hand, some authors seem to be more diligent and particular in their semantics, Faulkner (2001 136), for example, distinguishes both the terms crisis and disaster. He debates that a crisis refers to a circumstance in which the root cause of the event is, to some degree, self-inflicted through problems such as inept management organizations and organizational culture or a failure to admit to change, while on the other hand, a disaster can be described as a situation where an organization is encountered with abrupt unpredictable calamitous changes over which it has little or no control. Main theories Many models conceptually have a basis assuming that a crisis goes through a number of consecutively occurring stages, in essence following a particular life cycle. However, in reality, crises and disasters more often than not occur suddenly, without warning and a target position can immediately enter the emergency phase, by-passing the prodromal and pre-event phase and require- in a rap id reaction. Indeed, the alarm caused by the dramatic imminency of such events may prompt inappropriate decision making and confusion(Pender & Sharply, 2004). Explicitly, various models propose that risk assessments should be undertaken. On the basis of the analysis of