Tourism Crises and Disasters: Enhancing Understanding of System Effects

SUMMARY

This paper examines the definitions and conceptual foundations of crises and distinguishes between crises and disasters. It takes a systems view of these concepts and uses the perspective of systems as organizational networks to examine implications for tourism managers. A tourism destination is perceived as consisting of a network of interacting organizations. This perspective questions the boundaries that should be used to study crisis and disasters. The paper also discusses the possibility of a crisis having a positive outcome for a destination.

Key Words:

• Crisis
• disaster
• normality
• crisis management
• social network analysis