Tourism Disaster Risk Communication: Foreign Employees’ Preparedness and Involvement in the Japanese Accommodation Industry

ABSTRACT

Tourism operators play an important role in risk communication during a natural disaster. This study focussed on foreign employees in the Japanese accommodation industry and explored their preparedness for natural disasters and involvement in the disaster risk communication process. Adopting the mental models approach as the basis for the investigation, semi-structured interviews were conducted with foreign employees working at traditional Japanese-style inns (ryokan). The results indicated that foreign workers often do not receive training on how to handle natural disasters at work and are excluded from the risk communication process. Furthermore, their knowledge of local hazards was limited. As this is a timely and important topic, future research directions are proposed to extend discussion on this topic further.

KEYWORDS:

• Accommodation industry
• foreign employees
• Japan
• natural disasters
• risk communication
• ryokan

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS): [JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP17H02250 and JSPS Grant Number P19766].