5.1 Sobre el cliente y definición
5.3 Dualidad Universidad / Empresa
The private sector tourism industry participants were asked questions about the pre-event context to establish work that had been done to prevent or mitigate the effects of potential disasters. The questions asked were:
Before the tsunami, had your company considered what crisis management strategies
would be required in the event of such a disaster?
Could you elaborate on any disaster/emergency planning your company had in place to
deal with the tsunami?
Had your company conducted any environmental scanning, scenario planning or risk
analysis assessments in case of a crisis?
Did you then develop any strategic plans from your scanning and risk analysis?
The interviews indicated that the private sector tourism industry did not receive any early warnings and neither did they have any disaster management plans. There was no destination- wide plan as well. Therefore, the tourism sector operators were not able to cope with the situation effectively. However, headcounts were taken, tourists were looked after and every
145 foreign owned resort business receiving information from their management through satellite phone, none of the other businesses received any instructions immediately after the tsunami hit. Except for the resorts badly affected, the businesses interviewed did not request any tour operators to take the tourists.
In general, the tourist resorts and other private sector participants interviewed had different individual experiences, however none of the participants interviewed indicated any prior warning, and therefore none of the resorts had any time to prepare for an eventuality such as a tsunami disaster. According to one participant:
“We never had any warning, in fact that was a Sunday and we were having our morning briefing here in the meeting room. And one of our staff members was working in the beach with catamarans and saw that the water level was rising. He did not know what it was, that time in December as a Maldivian he knew that water level will not come up. So realized that something unusual was happening. So he quickly came on the island and informed the people”. (PS-R1)
The interviews indicate that the private sector had no plans to cope with such a disaster, or any guidelines for crisis management within their businesses and therefore were vulnerable. As a result of excessive media reporting the resorts experienced a significant downturn in international tourist arrivals. Emergency response plans were only for fires as per the Tourism Ministry’s safety requirements of having fire equipment in tourist resort buildings and safari vessels and annual monitoring of the same through the Fire Services Division of Maldives National Defense Force. According to one participant:
“Even before tsunami we did have an emergency response plan for fire, because fires were occurring every now and then, we had a complete procedure to follow in case we have a fire.” (PS-R3)
7.3.2
Pro-Active Planning Measures
Participants were asked about proactive or direct measures taken to prevent or mitigate effects of potential disasters by their businesses operations. The questions asked were:
Before the tsunami hit the country, had your company received any warning?
146 Do you have a documented crisis/risk management plan for your business that covers major risks/hazards?
Were you acting in response to the advice of any other division; your head office or
government authorities?
All private sector participants from the tourism industry indicated that they were not aware of any emergency response plans for the sector at the national level. Similarly they did not have any plans for severe weather or storm surges. However, one participant noted the environmental risk associated with beach erosion:
“Beach erosion is a common issue we are having and we have our own yearly plan to do that. And we continue working on the beach erosion issues and we control and minimize it. Otherwise we don’t have any other plan, because we don’t have any disasters here in the Maldives, we didn’t experience anything like that.” (PS-R1)
In the absence of formal/written emergency response plans, private sector establishments reacted to the disaster in very different ways. As one of the participants:
“We went around the island and we informed everyone that we want to make a headcount, so we asked all the guests to gather near the specialty restaurant and that’s where we counted that everyone was here because we also had diving trips out and when they came back we also collected everyone and the manager that time tried to keep the situation at an ease, not that anyone panics”. (PS-R5):
However, all interviewees indicated that most of the tourists booked during that period left the country due to panic, even from the islands that operated normally. This was due primarily to their respective governments instructing them to leave through travel advisories. All participants agreed that tourists started panicking after TV services resumed, when they realized what had happened. Even though the Maldives was not greatly affected the media coverage was focused on casualties in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka and of course the devastation in Indonesia and Thailand. One participant stated:
“That’s when it started to become hard for us because until then as I said no one knew anything and no one knew exactly what had happened and the guests were very calm. But for strange reason the moment when they realized what happened and the moment when they realized there were flights coming to Maldives to take out guests they got very aggressive.” (PS-R5)
147 computer systems to generate any guest lists to make even a head count. The resorts badly affected needed to evacuate as soon as they could, even if they had food stocks and water that could last for a few days. They were not able to produce any water through the desalination plants and the guests had to wash in the sea. All resorts were able to make contact with the Ministry of Tourism the day after the tsunami.
Tourist evacuations from the severely affected resorts were carried out using the resorts’ own dhonis (Maldivian name for motorized boats), the Coast Guard vessels and the Pakistani Naval Ship, which was visiting Maldives during that time. The British Tour Operators were the first ones to evacuate their clients in charter flights, followed by the German and Austrian
tour operators who reacted more slowly. However, after observing the situation on 29th
December 2004, they also started to send their charter flights to the Maldives to remove them. The resorts did not force any of their tour operators to evacuate the clients. One participant stated:
“But it was up to them. It was their decision whether they wanted to stay or whether they wanted to go. So the tour operator didn’t force them where as the English Tour Operators they did take their guests out. They didn’t want any guests to stay here.” (PS-R3)
The tour operators and the resorts could not properly communicate with the airport during the first few days after the tsunami which led to delays in booking seats for passengers on these charter flights. As indicated above, the resorts which received less damage did try to inform customers of the situation, by explaining the circumstances, however most wanted to leave. In severely affected resorts, the guests had to be kept in the reception area, and the kitchens were in such a bad state local islanders cooked for their guests. Resorts concentrated on taking the injured, and people in need first to the airport. One resort chartered a flight to transport customers. In some cases, resorts were unable to even communicate with their respective tour operators, media sources and the concerned families of their clients who were worried about their loved ones. One participant indicated:
“We had to deal with the media in all our major markets. We were not in a position to issue reassuring messages because we lacked information and the phone system was completely down for the first two days, no real information was available. In some cases it took as long as four days to restore the telephone services.”(PS-T1)
148
7.3.3
Environmental Scanning, Risk Analysis and Disaster Contingency Plans
Gurtner (2007) argues that tourism related crisis or risk management requires considerable investment of resources from tourism businesses. Using crisis management case studies from Bali and Phuket he explains that the effects of the tsunami in Thailand could have been reduced through enhanced stakeholder awareness, competent knowledge of appropriate preparation and responses. Similar to the Maldives, Southern Thailand also had no regional or destination level crisis management plan in place. As highlighted earlier, companies need to invest in time and money and other resources to create contingency plans. Even if the resorts in the Maldives could bear the cost of preparing these plans, there was no legal requirement to have them prior to the tsunami. As highlighted by the respondents from the NTOs, MOT has not been able to go ahead with recommendations provided in the sector disaster management plan and tourism master plans due to budgetary constraints.Having risk management and business resilience plans has not been a legal requirement, even after the tsunami. The MOT published disaster management plan guidelines for tourism
vessels, tourist guest houses/ hotels and tourist resorts in their website on 5th December 2013.
In December 2013, local media reported response and recovery training for one resort through NDMC assistance, who called upon other tourism enterprises to participate in the future. Resort safety and environment management plans developed prior to resort development for legal requirements do not include risk management frameworks and disaster management components. One participant noted that:
“Honestly speaking, I would say that people working in the tourism operations aren’t trained and prepared. They do not conduct any drills as well.” (PS-S1)
For small tourism businesses in the Maldives, developing contingency plans will be difficult since they lack capital. Even though none of the businesses interviewed highlighted this fact, they stressed on lack of skills and trained people in this area and without such resources it is unlikely that they will have the competency to develop crisis management planning. In his article about crisis management models and their applicability to small scale businesses, Cushnahan (2004) examined the small island of Gili Air in Indonesia. He found that all 43 small businesses had no crisis management plans or trained personnel and therefore the responses to the crisis was ad hoc and unsystematic. Tourism business owners and managers did not assemble crisis management teams and overall they had no access to funds or credit facilities, and had to deal the crisis in a piecemeal fashion (Cushnahan, 2004). Most of the
149 the Maldives, had similar stories.