Tourism Crisis and Disaster Management

Tourism is a multi-trillion dollar industry worldwide. Due to the modern era and the increasing abilities of people to travel, tourism is a growing industry and will continue to do so during the foreseeable future. There are things however that can contribute to a decline in tourism; especially in certain regions of the world due to certain events that unfold. When the decline in tourism reaches such a scale, it begins to be categorized as a crisis. Tourism crisis’ can be caused by many things, one thing is certain though, and that is that all tourism crisis’ happen for different reasons but all adversely affect the tourism industry in their respective areas of the globe. With the growth of urban living around the globe, urban disasters as well are growing in both severity and frequency. Disasters come in all shapes and sizes and can be very detrimental to people in many ways. This has led to the implementation of disaster management practices in order to lessen the detrimental effects that disasters can cause. With the implementation of disaster management, comes the never ending effort to try and gain the upper hand on disasters. Disaster management in modern society can vary greatly in scale, focus, methodologies and applications from city to city or region to region. Disaster management is an ever-changing field with new techniques, technologies and practices being created every day to make it more effective. In turn, the ever-changing field of disaster management coupled with the always advancing technologies throughout the globe urge the professionals of today to evolve in how they approach disaster management problems. As an editor, I have shed light on some of the work being performed by modern day professionals in the field of disaster management along with the tourism industry. The intermingling of topics within the tourism and disaster management fields are present within this book; many of the chosen articles cited show the close relationship that both industries can have on each other. More specifically, I shed light on policies, methodologies, technologies, techniques and trends in the fields of disaster management and within the tourism industry. From hidden assets to Greece’s transition to an innovation economy to emergency preparedness for disasters and crises in the hotel industry; from disaster management to the tourism crisis, I hope that this book will be found useful for teaching, learning and research alike.