Although Faulkner’s (2001) framework demonstrates how to cope effectively with a crisis according to the evolution of the crisis, as well as indicating the importance of having strategic planning for crises, there are both some limitations and some crucial factors missing in the framework.
In common with other ‘blueprint’, prescriptive models of tourism crisis management, Faulkner’s framework, commencing at is does with the preparatory stage including risk assessment and scenario planning, implicitly assumes that crises are predictable in both occurrence and form. However, as Speakman & Sharpley (2012) observe, this is rarely the case. Crises and/or disasters are unpredictable in their evolution and outcomes. Thus, creating realistic and likely scenarios is problematic, potentially time- wasting and fruitless (de Sausmarez 2004) and may lead to complacency and unpreparedness for an event when it actually occurs (Evans & Elphick 2005). Moreover, the linear, prescriptive nature of many frameworks, including Faulkner’s, reflect the assumption that crises follow a defined path or lifecycle. Again, however, this is not
52
necessarily the case. Crises may be complex and chaotic in nature, displaying the characteristics of different stages at the same time, and as a consequence a linear planning model is unable to cope with this complexity (Paraskevas 2006). Equally, all crises are different, each requiring a unique response (Carlsen & Hughes 2007).
Nevertheless, Faulkner’s framework is appropriate to the case of the Three Gorges Dam, particularly as the phases of a crisis as defined in the framework are clearly evident. However, three omissions serve to weaken the potential contribution of the framework to crisis management. Firstly, Faulkner neglects the analysis of visitors’ perceptions and attitudes as a crucial factor that might inform the development and implementation of recovery strategies. Consequently, most subsequent studies largely focus on the strategic responses to the crises or disasters from a supply side perspective (governments, agencies and organizations). It is known that the tourism industry cannot exist without the participation of tourists. Visitors’ attitudes towards a destination, namely destination image, directly influence their destination choice. This suggests that particularly, after an extraordinary situation, such as a crisis, to understand visitors’ perceptions of the affected destination becomes more important as it can help destination managers to efficiently redevelop tourism resources and products, and rebuild tourists’ confidence to the destination.
Although some authors (Andereck 2009; Beirman 2003; Hanlan, Fuller & Wilde 2006; Laws 1995; Seymour & Moore 2000; Trotter 2001) recognize that there has been a growing awareness among the general public about health, safety and environmental matters in recent years, and emphasize that a consideration of consumers’ destination decision-making is important for a strategic planning and management approach in a destination, none of them link visitors’ perceptions to tourism crisis management. For example, Laws (1995: 20) claims ‘people’s experience of international destinations suggests that holiday takers are becoming more experienced and knowledgeable as consumers. Tourists’ destination choices involve health factors, involvement and freedom’. Trotter (2001) theoretically discusses the relationship between tourism, safety and terrorism by looking at some recent events where tourists have been subjected to physical threats or violence, and then indicates that safety has now become more of an important factor to be considered by tourists when they choose a long-haul journey. Beirman (2003) and Hunter-Jones, Jeffs & Smith (2007) also agree that a major determinant in a traveler’s decision to visit a destination is the perception of risk, safety and security. Additionally, Andereck (2009: 489) stresses ‘travelers also have become increasingly aware of the need for environmental protection’.
53
In contrast to the authors cited above, McKercher & Hui (2004) propose that most tourists have relatively short memories and will resume traveling when they feel the immediate threat has passed; therefore, disasters tend to have no lasting impact on tourist flows. However, ‘tourist flows’ cannot be seen as ‘tourist perceptions’, as it is difficult to judge if a disaster/crisis has a long-term or short-term impact on visitors’ perception of an affected destination.
Few, if any, authors recognize the importance of understanding visitors’ perception of an affected destination or suggest that the design of marketing strategies to attract customers back should be based on the analysis of visitors’ attitudes. Certainly, Dolnicar (2007) notes that some global political events in recent years, such as terrorism attacks and the emergence of global epidemics, have reignited awareness of the importance of risk perception, adding a new dimension to the potential consequences of not understanding what scares tourists. Therefore, Dolnicar (2007) proposes that developing an in-depth understanding of the concerns tourists have and the way they might react to different kinds of events in the course of a travel or destination choice process becomes more important than ever for crisis management. Avraham & Ketter (2008: 105) suggest similarly that ‘different target audiences are motivated by different needs, have different perceptions of places and are differently affected by the occurrences of a crisis event’. They go on to ‘recommend five dimensions for analyzing the target audience: proximity of the audience to the place in crisis, type of audience and their size, knowledge of the crisis and of the place, sources of information and the social-political environment in which the audience live and operate’. Huang, Tseng & Petrick (2010: 206) stress that during the recovery period, ‘it is crucial for destination marketers to understand touristic perceptions in order to tailor promotional messages accordingly. Communications need to address tourist concerns, change false perceptions, and reinforce positive-perceptions’. However, overall, there is a lack of empirical case studies which link visitors’ perceptions of an affected destination to crisis management.
Secondly, Faulkner (2001) also overlooks the fact that a variety of factors influence crisis management in tourism destinations, including diverse groups of stakeholders related to tourism destinations, and different regional or national cultures. On the one hand, tourism destinations involve many different and diverse groups of stakeholders, such as the community, individual business operators, sectoral organizations, regional tourism organizations, local, state and national government representatives, and many
54
others; thus, in a crisis management situation, these stakeholder groups may not perceive a crisis in the same way, according to their different objectives and priorities (Campiranon & Scott 2007).
On the other hand, there is a closer relationship between national culture, leadership and tourism crisis management. In most cases, governments play a very important role in prevention of, response to and coping with crises.
The subject of tourism crisis management includes the government, tourism industry management departments at all levels inclusive tourism businesses. But because of the various inducements of tourism crisis and wide ranges, in order to reduce the losses the crisis has brought, the safest and the most effective management mode from crisis prevention, treatment, rehabilitation and conclusion should be the management oriented by the government. Theories related to tourism crisis management mainly involves in Chaos theory, Psychology theory, Organizational management theory, Government role theory, among which, the application of Government role theory is the important step to analyze the role of the government in the tourism crisis management.
Zhao & Zhang (2010: 1)
Nevertheless, the image of a government can often be threatened by crises if the government does not handle them well (Low, Varughese & Pang 2011). As a result, ‘government efficient responses to shocks are important and will often affect the rate of recovery of the tourism industry, however, little in the tourism literature to assist governments to prepare for the unexpected, and cope with its impact’ (Prideaux, Laws & Faulkner 2003: 479).
In Zhao & Zhang’s (2010) research, it is suggested that before the outbreak of the crisis, the government should focus on building up a sense of the crisis, constructing early warning mechanisms of the crisis, and being well prepared to respond to the crisis. In the crisis, the government should focus on dealing with the crisis to ensure that needed resources are reasonably allocated and the losses of the affected areas are minimized. After a crisis, the government is expected to make new policy and provide capital supports for quick recovery of the affected destination. At this stage, main actions, such as reconstructing and rehabilitating infrastructures in affected tourism destination, building up the safety image of the tourism destination, smoothing
55
the tourists’ psychological shadow caused by the crisis, providing accurate information to tourists, strengthening the marketing of the tourism brand, and introducing various tourism products, should be taken to eventually turn the crisis into opportunities. Certainly, governments may also ‘enforce or implement external forces, such as regulation, government policies or changes, from other external stakeholders’ (Blackman & Ritchie 2009: 60).
Indeed, national culture can generally influence management decision-making and leadership (Campiranon & Scott 2007). According to Schmidt & Berrell (2007: 67), ‘typical Western responses to a crisis would be rooted in rational approaches underpinned by universal ideas. However, in some Eastern countries, the responses of people to a crisis will be subtly affected by differences in the prevailing cultural architecture’. Following this argument, Schmidt & Berrell (2007: 67) point out that ‘the influence of Western crisis management practices on Eastern approaches to managing a crisis remains problematic’. Thus, it can be argued that although the characteristics of crises are the same or similar, the difference in cultural and political backgrounds amongst countries leads to different perceptions of crisis and modes of crisis management.
Tourism is a ‘multi-cultural industry, and when a crisis occurs, the context differs by culture, organizational style and political structure’ (Mistilis & Sheldon 2005). Chatterjee & Pearson (2009: 32) reveal that ‘a common weakness of the scholarly research in crisis management is to routinely underemphasize a systemic thinking culture. It is essential to recognize and study inter-functional relations and motivation of the various elements of a system in order to successfully plan and implement crisis response in organizations’. Lee (2005) also criticizes that ‘crisis communication theory is lacking cultural contextualization, dominated by applied case studies and is based on a Western oriented paradigm’. Differing from western countries, in many Asian countries ‘losing face’ is unappreciated, so even if a crisis happens, most governments are reluctant to admit it, which can directly affect the accuracy of information and timeliness of government response (de Sausmarez 2004). Therefore, in order to make crisis management frameworks more widely applicable, some elements in the framework must be adjusted according to the nature of crises and the characteristics of national circumstances.
To take China as an example for further explanation: China is not only one of four ancient civilizations, but also one of the very few contemporary socialist countries.
56
Crisis written in Chinese is ‘危机’ (Wei Ji), which includes two meanings: danger and opportunity. Since ancient times, Chinese people have believed that risk and opportunity co-exist. Although China has experienced numerous crises, such as 1959- 61 Three-Year Great Famine (namely Three-Year Natural Disasters), 1966 the Cultural Revolution, 1989 Massacre in Tiananmen Square, 1994 the Qiandao Lake Incident, 1997-98 Asian Financial Crisis, it eventually coped with them and made good recovery from the worse situations. Nevertheless, prior to the SARS outbreak in 2003, there has typically been a lack of subsequent research and evaluation of crises. However, as Jia (2008) reveals, after the SARS outbreak, the Chinese government started to pay more attention to crisis management.
Nevertheless, the special political system of China has some advantages, which can be reflected in coping with major crises. The government of China is effectively a one- party state controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (Dumbaugh & Martin 2009). Therefore, ‘hierarchical power relationships and an authoritarian political culture remain an important and powerful factor. The autonomy of local authorities like provinces is not clear-cut and sometimes enhances contradictions. This is demonstrated by the tendencies of local governments to downplay the intensity of a crisis, which is what happened during the SARS episode in 2003’ (Hui 2009). The authorities in Guangzhou province were criticized for not doing more to stop the SARS outbreak and for not releasing information about the disease in the early stages (Hays 2008). As a result, Lai (2004) concludes, ‘these problems can only be addressed by strict disciplining from the central authority’. According to Boin, t’ Hart, Stern & Sundelius (2005), modern theories of crisis management tend to be in favour of decentralized modes of crisis operation, which is considered to yield higher efficiency and immediacy. However, within centralized states, such as China, these theories cannot be implemented immediately (Hui 2009), whilst the success of the Chinese government in managing 2008 Sichuan Earthquake crisis is a convincing case for retaining centralized control.
Thirdly, although Faulkner emphasizes the importance of media communication for crisis management, details about its strategy are only mentioned in the ‘action’ and ‘recovery’ stages. As Faulkner (2001) states, a media communication strategy can ensure that misleading and contradictory information is not disseminated, and support the coordination of responses. Indeed, ‘the media often plays a central role in tourism disaster situations, both in terms of providing important information to tourists during the emergency and in the recovery stage when other sectors of the industry and the consuming public need to be informed about the restoration of services’ (Faulkner 2001:
57
145). Therefore, without a good media communication strategy during a crisis, the validity and accuracy of information will be affected. Moreover, misleading information cannot only make the crisis even worse but also affect tourists’ confidence of traveling back to the destination in the future.
Several authors (Avraham & Ketter 2008; de Sausmarez 2004; Grunig 1992; Ladkin, Fyall, Fletcher & Shipway 2007; Laws, Prideaux & Chon 2007; Ritchie 2004; Scott, Laws & Prideaux 2008; Zhong & Low 2009) also consider the management of communication and perceptions through a crisis communication and marketing strategy to be crucial. As Zhong & Low (2009: 271) stress, ‘when an organization is threatened by external environment crisis and internal events, the need for communication increases to some extent’. ‘Excellent’ organizations are good at using the potential of communication management to assist in transformation and relationships with the environment (Grunig 1992). de Sausmarez (2004) recognizes the significance of communication between all stakeholders and claims that ‘clear communication throughout the whole crisis period not only increases public awareness but also reduces anxiety by offering reassurance and advice’. Regular communication between government departments and between the public and private sectors would facilitate co-ordination and enhance progresses. Nevertheless, Laws, Prideaux & Chon (2007: 7) observe that although the media has a significant positive role in alerting the population to crisis situations, the visual and often-graphic nature of contemporary reporting on many occasions exaggerates the scale of the crisis and its impact, which may result in a greater impact on tourism than the crisis to a large extent.
Without doubt, when a crisis is inevitable, media communication plays an essential role at the ‘recovery’ stage. Nevertheless, it is considered that media communication should perform different functions at the different stages of a crisis. Its importance at the different stages of a crisis cannot be neglected. Contrasting with Faulkner’s theory and other commentators, Avraham & Ketter (2008) propose an Integrated Model of Crisis Management and Crisis Communication Management (see Table 2.4 overleaf). The model summarizes and unifies the bodies of knowledge in the fields of crisis, crisis management and crisis communication management, which is based on the four stages of a crisis’s life cycle – precaution, planning-prevention, crisis coping and post- crisis – and uses these stages to illustrate the different aspects, techniques and activities applied in crisis situations.
58
image can be achieved through creating rapport with the media. However, at the post- crisis stage, a good media strategy can transform a negative image of an affected destination into positive image, and eliminate potential tourists’ anxiety and fear, thereby helping, to some extent, the destination return to normal operation.
Table 2.4 Integrated model for the relations between crisis life cycle, crisis
management and crisis communication management
Crisis life cycle
Crisis management Crisis communication
management Precaution Positive organizational environment;
open communication between employees, executives and stakeholders; balanced and proper use of organizational resources; cultivating and motivating human resources
General image management as part of the place’s management; media relations; allocating resources for PR; creating rapport with the media; community relations and social contribution
Planning- prevention
Preparing emergency response and action plan; forming crisis management team and special assistance team; risk management; signal detection
Training spokespersons; preparing ready-made media messages; issue management
Crisis coping
Staffing the crisis management center; operating medical team, logistic team, security team and victims’ relief team; investigating the cause of the crisis
Crisis communication techniques such as quick response with one, simple message; using a single spokesperson; transparency and creating empathy
Post-crisis Rehabilitation of infrastructure; reestablishing work routines; compensating victims; debriefing; updating crisis portfolios
Media strategies for improving negative image; activities to change the negative image; debriefing; impression recovery
Source: Avraham & Ketter (2008: 85).
Differing from Faulkner’s theory, Avraham & Ketter (2008) argue that media communication is also crucial at the precaution stage of a crisis. As they (2008: 87) propose:
At the precaution stage, from the perspective of crisis communication management, this ongoing stage is used to create a strong and favorable image for the place or organization. One key factor in general image management is the creation of good media relations…. During a crisis situation negative information will naturally find its way to the media. If good media relations exist, the reporter is more likely to ask for the organization’s comments and to take the organization’s perspective on the crisis into consideration.
59
Also, Avraham (2003) found that good media relations had a positive effect on the coverage of specific places.
The development of the Three Gorges tourism during the construction of the Dam is a good case study to exemplify the importance of media communication for local governments at the precaution stage of a crisis. Following the Chinese government’s announcement about the date (1992) of the construction of the Dam, Taiwan media immediately released reports about the disappearance of the fascinating scenery of the Three Gorges. These reports misled many domestic and international consumers which, as previously noted in Chapter One, resulted in a rapid increase of the number of tourists to the Three Gorges region in a short term. In 1997, when the construction of the Dam approached a new stage, similar reports appeared again, again leading to a boom in inbound tourism to the Three Gorges region (Bao, Xu & Dai 2002; Kan, Deng & Mou 2010). In the previous seven years (1992-1998), however, the local governments of Chongqing and Yichang took few, if any, actions to stop the misleading news until the development of Three Gorges tourism experienced a serious setback in 1998. At that time, limited service capacity and undeveloped public infrastructure could