A leading role for tourism authorities when managing reputational capital after destination crisis

Different crisis arising from political or environmental instability usually place tourism authorities in a reactive role focused on recovering loss tourism, whose effectiveness can be affected by how healthy it's reputational capital sits with stakeholders. David Beirman looks at the case of Egypt and the challenges for the government and the Egyptian tourism industry, in the setting of the 1st International Conference in Safety and Crisis Management, Nicosia, Cyprus.

The Egyptian approach (especially to the travel industry) to recover tourism post the January/ February uprising has tended to focus more on what tourists can do for Egypt rather than on why it should be in the best interest of tourist to visit Egypt. The ETA and the Egyptian tourism industry has gone part of the way to address the latter issue by stressing the advantages of visitors being able to experience Egypt’s sites relatively unhindered by crowds and stressing the warm welcome they would no doubt receive in Egypt. The embrace of the “revolution” by Egypt’s tourism industry has been an unusual approach but it is a double-edged sword when trying to convince tourists to come and travel companies to promote the destination....Read on