crises and emergency management in the tourism industry in Abuja metropolis

CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1.1 Background of the Study Tourism is a social, cultural and economic phenomenon which entails the movement of people to countries or places outside their usual environment for personal or professional purposes (UNWTO, 2008). The tourism industry is undoubtedly an important sector of the global economy, the importance of the sector can be sustained by the research conducted over the last 26 years by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC, 2020) which represent the sectors of the travel and tourism industry. However, despite the economic impact and social importance of the global tourism sector, it is vulnerable to human induced crises (e.g economy recession, industrial accidents, disease outbreak, political instability, civil unrest e.,t.c). Sometimes naturally occurring accidents (e.g volcanic eruptions, flooding and hurricanes), which can affect both destinations and organizations offering a wide range of services in the tourism industry. Henderson, Claeser, 2006, Henderson, 2007, Ritchie, 2008, Ritchie, 2014). Several research studies revealed that these crises can negatively influence tourist perceptions of the safety and security of the affected destinations and organization, causing disruption to the normal operations of the tourism sector in affected destinations and beyond (Cio and Martins, 2017; Pappas, 2018; Zopiatis, 2019; Mykhailo and Halyna, 2020). The United Nations World Tourism Organizations recently (UNWTO, 2020) reported on the COVID -19 global pandemic on tourism suggests that international tourists arrival are estimated to decline over 70% percent of the whole of 2020, which results to loss of revenue from tourism and 120million direct job cuts. A crises is defined as “any action or failure to act that interferes with an organizations ongoing functions, the acceptable attainments of its objectives, its viability or survival that has a detrimental personal effect as perceived by the majority of its employees, clients or constituents . Selbet, 1978, cited in Faulkner, 2001 P. 136). Also, Coombs, (2014, p3) defines crises as “an unpredictable events that threatens the important expectations of stakeholders related to health, safety, environmental and economic issues, and can seriously impact an organizations performance and generate negative outcomes”. Crises can and will happen to any organization or individual at any place and time, be the schools, hospitals, factories, airports, banks, shopping malls, hotels (including other tourism businesses). Non – governmental organizations, private businesses, media houses or even individual public figure (Lando, 2014, P 6). Crises management in tourism defines crises “as an event perceived by managers and stakeholders to be highly salient, unexpected and potentially disruptive”. The common factor in these recent definitions of crises is the perception of stakeholders, which shows that stakeholders of diverse organizations including the tourism industry are critically in crises event, because of the vulnerability of the tourism industry to various external and internal challenges and crises. (Henderson, 2003; Mikercher and Thei, 2004). Crises have been described as a situation that can threaten normal operations in the tourism industry and destinations reputation. Therefore, crises demands relevant stakeholders’ intervention and thus, the need to identify how a crises could be prevented, prepared for, managed, recovered from as well as understanding relevant stakeholders involvement towards averting the diverse consequences that could be associated with crises. Given the definitions it becomes evident that unlike incidents, emergency or disaster, crises is not necessarily precipitated by the threat of a real imminent danger or direct physical impact of the hazard age, crises in tourism industry is natural or man-made incidents which are triggered by external and less tangible factors that adversely affects the image of a destination such as proximate regional instability, rumor and bad publicity. As it remains feasible and logistically impossible to insulate against every such contingency and so no tourism destination can be completely immuned from crises (Bierman, 2005). Crises management according to Santana (2004, P 308) defined crises as an ongoing integrated and comprehensive effort that organizations effectively manage those that occur, taking into account in each and every step of their planning and training activities in the interest of stakeholders. As such crises management needs to be treated as part of a business mount stream functions not as an ancillary activity, part of these process is the infusion of learning how to respond to and management in the business culture. A suitable reward and incentives scheme needs to be embedded into preparedness for crises and must become an integral part of the strategic consciousness of organizations. Meyers and Holusha (2001), suggested that the essential point of crises management is to break the sequence of the unmanaged crisis and to redirect events. 1.2 Statement of the Problem It is generally known that external crises incidence are now more recurrent, extreme and can extend beyond the initial geographical place of reoccurrence (International Federation of Red and Red Cresent, 2018; Penningson, 2018). The occurrence of external crises incidents can cause concerns for stakeholders in terms of decline in tourism demands often associated with tourist negative perceptions of destinations experiencing such events. Thus, external crises incidents demands effective management, proactive preparedness for the possibility of occurrence and efficient response on the part of the host key stakeholders, was including emergency organizations, tourism businesses and related trade organizations among others. External crisis such as terrorist attack, economic crises, political instability among many other related incidents are particularly noted to constitute more risk due to spontaneous involuntarily and random nature of potential harm associated with visiting destinations that have experienced such incidence (Henderson, 2007; Alperti, 2020). There is no doubt that occurrence of any external incident at a destination can be categorically referred to as tourism cases, as tourism thrive in a safe and stable political, economic, social and technological environment (Ritchie, 2009). There has not been adequate research that addresses crises management in the African context especially in Nigeria. The few existing studies on crises on crises management in African regions have mainly focused on the Cameroonian, Egyptian, Ghanaians, Kenyan and Tunisian context (De Sausmares, 2013; Mokakabati, 2013; Lanovar and Goaied, 2019). With none of the studies focusing on Nigerian context. Nigeria remains a destination where states of the federation experiences crises such as terrorist attacks, threats, political violence and other security related unrest are being experienced in many terrorism destinations. Therefore, the present study seeks to look into existing crises faced in some of the tourism industries in Abuja, the capital city, their preparedness, recovery and responses to these crises. 1.3 Objectives of the Study The studies have the following objectives 1. To identify events that are most likely to occur as crises 2. To access existing ways to curb these crises 3. To create awareness on crises preparedness and how to manage crises 4. To identify an emergency response, preparedness and recovery system for the tourism industry. 1.4 Significance of the Study The study aims towards developing measures, plans and ways to respond to crises event in an adequate way to maximize the negative impact to tourist and the tourism industry. And also to explore ways and strategies in planning managing and responding to crises in the tourism industry (e.g such crises could be social, political, economic and technological and even environmental crises) which can be classified as (natural and man-made crises). Natural crises e.g (hurricanes, earthquakes, epidemics, tsunamis e.t.c). while man-made are (financial, economic crises, environmental crises, political instability, insecurity, industrial accidents e.t.c). The study crises and emergency management in the tourism industry if properly reviewed and examined will be of great benefit to the tourism industry, stakeholders, tourist and the world at large, which will be beneficial through economic stability, political stability, protection of lives and properties e.t.c which will bring about progressive measures on how to tackle crises if any and it will create comfortability to tourist when visiting destinations and high tourist flow to destinations with less fear of crises and to therefore, facilitate the development of unique tourism industries crises management system for anticipating and preventing risk/crises, respond and recovering from crises related incidents that can affect the tourism industry at various levels in Abuja metropolis including measures for further studies on crises management. 1.5 Scope of the Study The study is about crises and emergency management in the tourism industry in Abuja metropolis, and the strategies used towards effective management, planning recovering and responding to crises that could affect the tourism industry. The research is to enhance awareness of crises preparedness, management, and response and recovery issues. Thus, these offer opportunities for further studies that can build the initial findings. 1.6 Research Questions 1. What are those events that are likely to occur as crises? 2. What are the existing strategies to curb these crises? 3. What are some of the integrated emergency response system in the tourism industry? 4. What are these means of creating awareness and managing crises in the tourism industry?