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Abstract
A new paradigm for the study of disaster has shown that disasters, rather than caused by factors exogenous to the social system, are at least partially socially constructed or produced. This article seeks to induce the insights of contemporary disaster research into the study of specific issues on the interface of tourism and disaster. It proposes a research agenda for the topic and applies it to a comparative study of two tourism-related disasters: the 2004 tsunami on the Andaman coastal tourism region of southern Thailand and the 2005 flash-floods in the backpacker enclave of Pai in the country's North. The study has shown, that the boundary between what is ‘exogenous’ and ‘internal’ to the tourist system is moot and permeable. While the origins of both disasters have been ‘exogenous’, the vulnerability of both sites was aggravated by human activity, which had destroyed natural barriers to disaster hazards. While the pre-disaster conditions in both cases have been similar, and reflected some wider traits of Thai society, as well as the common tendency of the tourist industry to disregard disaster hazards, they differed significantly in the manner in which the respective disasters have been handled, and in their consequences for the future of tourism. The differences reflected not only the obvious disparities in the scope and severity of the two disasters, but also the dissimilarity in the significance ascribed to the two sites in the national tourist system.