Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

National Tourist Organizations
The preparation of a priori contingency plans to handle security induced tourism
crises is not, in most countries, part of the governmental management culture
(Mansfeld, 1999; Prideaux, 2003; Santana, 2003). However, post priori and in an
ad hoc manner, many national tourism organizations and tourism ministries around
the world have played a major role in initiating and coordinating crisis manage-
ment operations to mitigate the negative impacts of security situations in their
respective territories (Mansfeld, 1999; Frisby, 2002). Their involvement in crisis
operation focused on co-funding and coordinating marketing and PR campaigns to
regenerate tourist demand once the security crisis was over (Wahab, 1996; Mansfeld,
1999; Baral et al., 2004). However, in most cases this organizational involvement in
crisis management was reactive rather than proactive, ignoring the necessity to adopt
a long-term crisis-management approach. Mansfeld (1999) argued that the policy of
ignoring the cyclic nature of many security induced tourism crises could be attrib-
uted to the urge to save the cost involved in continuous marketing and security
communication for potential markets. Evidently, such an ongoing crisis-
management strategy might be costly but is imperative in security affected desti-
nations that experience detrimental irregularity of tourist demand as a result of
cycles of security situations (Sönmez et al., 1999).
In some cases, the involvement of national tourism organizations is problematic
not only because of its shortsighted reactive characteristic. This involvement also
tends to be very slow and cumbersome and tends to supply uncoordinated infor-
mation on the crisis as well as on the level and risk involved in taking a trip to the
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affected destination while the security situation is still on (Richie et al., 2003). One
of the constraints imposed on national tourism organizations is the effect of uncer-
tainty as to how the crisis will develop and how long it will last. Due to budgetary
limitations, the tendency of these organizations is to assume that the life span of a
given security induced tourism crisis will be short and that they can count on
tourists’ short memories about such events (Mansfeld, 1996; Wall, 1996; Mansfeld,
1999; Prideaux, 2003; Richie et al., 2003). Therefore, the unanticipated additional
budget needed to communicate with potential tourists and convey crisis oriented
information to them in a comprehensive, constant, and accurate manner is not nor-
mally allocated (Baral et al., 2004). This strategy of “Let’s wait, do nothing, and
see if the situation improves” is counterproductive and contributes to further dete-
rioration of affected destinations’ safety and security image (Sönmez et al., 1999;
Beirman, 2003).
It was noted earlier in this chapter that a security image is formed not only
among potential tourists but also among tour operators in the generating markets.
Since their decision to include an affected destination in their promotional mate-
rial is critical to many receiving countries, it is imperative that national tourism
organizations will convey their crisis communications on this level too. However,
such contingency operations should, yet again, be carefully planned before a crisis
situation evolves, and taken off the shelf for implementation immediately after a
security event has begun (Prideaux, 2003). If such a policy is adopted, as was the
case in Cyprus in the aftermath of the 1974 civil war; in Fiji after the 1987 and
2000 political coups, and in Egypt after the 1997 Luxor massacre of tourists, it
could increase the chance of faster recovery. However, documentation and analy-
sis of a previous tourism crisis made by Beirman (2003) shows that concerted mar-
keting campaigns are not enough. Even if Tourism Action Groups (based on the
Fijian strategic model) react quickly with carefully prepared marketing efforts,
their actions cannot be efficient enough unless accompanied by risk and security
communication systems provided for the generating markets by the tourism
authorities of the affected destinations (Mansfeld and Kliot, 1996; Mansfeld, 1999;
Sönmez et al., 1999; Berno and King, 2001; Bierman, 2003).