Natural disaster management in tourist destinations: a systematic literature review

Abstract

While tourism plays an extremely important role, both as a competitive tool and as a driver of regional development, there are nevertheless events that take place beyond the control of tourism destinations and that may jeopardise their attractiveness. Within this scope, the relationship between tourism and natural disasters has been subject to study within the framework of different fields of knowledge. However, there is a shortcoming in the analysis on the strategies and operational guidelines for the management of tourism destinations in the wake of natural disaster with this constituting the major contribution of this study. We undertook a systematic review of the literature on this theme featured in the Web of ScienceTM Core Collection and Scopus databases and adapting the protocol PRISMA with the keywords “Tourism” & “Disaster” & “Natural” in order to select the articles for review. The results, among others, allowed us to identify the existence of several distinct natural disasters in countries of the various continents of the world, with very compromising impacts and consequences for the attractiveness of any tourist destination. Planning, marketing, trust, cooperation and resilience are some of the strategies and guidelines implemented by the management of a tourist destination after a natural disaster.