Tourism Policy: Structure, Content, and Process - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 344

2. Informational crises, such as a loss of proprietary and con dential information, tampering with

computer records, or the loss of key computer information that relates to customers and
suppliers

3. Physical crises, such as loss of key equipment, plants, and material suppliers; breakdowns of key

equipment and industrial plants; loss of key facilities; and major plant disruptions

4. Human resource crises, such as loss of key executives, loss of key personnel, increased

absenteeism, increased vandalism, an increased number of accidents, and a rise in workplace
violence

5. Reputation crises, such as slander, gossip, rumors, damage to corporate reputation, and

tampering with corporate logos

6. Crises resulting from psychopathic acts, such as product tampering, kidnapping, hostage taking,

terrorism, and workplace violence

Natural disasters, such as earthquakes, res, floods, explosions, typhoons, and hurricanes 10

7.

They further stress that, although the major categories of crises share many similarities, there can
be substantial differences in the impact they have on an organization.
More speci cally, a crisis brought about by a natural disaster will probably affect a destination
very differently from one caused by the loss of a key executive. Given this reality, Mitroff and
Anagnos suggest that the best management approach is to develop policies to prepare for at least
one crisis in each of the categories. Unfortunately, they note that the majority of organizations do
much less, in that they tend to consider at most one or two categories. For example, most
companies prepare for natural disasters. Organizations that do broaden their preparations for crises
other than natural disasters often do so only for ''core'' or ''normal'' disasters that are speci cto
their particular industry.

Dealing with Crises

The best method of crisis management is preparation before a crisis occurs — rst implementing an

effort to prevent the crisis from occurring at all, and then developing the ability to react immediately
and effectively should an outbreak or incident arise. This means a disaster (crisis) plan must
be developed.
Good crisis management requires policies to deal with each stage of a crisis situation if a
destination is to prevent or minimize a crisis. First, one needs detection policies. This requires a
monitoring system of the macroenvironment to make sure one is detecting problems and anticipating
tomorrow rather than reacting to yesterday. The second requirement is for prevention or minimization
policies. This involves such areas as legislation, law enforcement, security devices, and safety and
security training for employees. The third need is for readiness policies that require leadership for crisis
coordination, emergency response, assistance for families, internal and external communications,
information dissemination, and media relations. Fourth, response policies, which include effective
emergency response and answering the public call for information, should be put in place. Telling the
truth is a vital crisis management policy. Finally, recovery policies to enable a return to normalcy are a
high priority. These include the rebuilding process,

information dissemination, publicity, public

relations, and marketing.
The concern of the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) about crises resulted in
its creating the UNWTO Recovery Committee. This committee has published Crisis Guidelines for the
Tourism Industry, which offers a one-step reference document suggesting speci c actions to take
before, during, and immediately after a crisis to get tourists returning to a destination as quickly as
possible. The publication is available on UNWTO ' is Web site ( www.unwto.org ).