Crisis Management in Australian Tourism and Hospitality: Lessons from Recent Events
Introduction
The business research will be based on analysing the importance of crisis management within the tourism and hospitality sector of Australia. The main Emphasis will be provided on crisis management because of the recent issues that the tourism and hospitality sector within the nation has faced in relation to bushfires and the pandemic. The business research will focus on a literature review which will help in collecting a range of secondary sources to back the research problem that will be considered.
Problem Statement
The tourism and hospitality sector of Australia has faced a devastating impact on their business due to the natural disaster of the bushfire and the COVID-19 pandemic. Several hospitality organisations were not able to adapt to this sudden challenge and faced a large amount of loss in their operations. One of the main reasons for this problem to become significant was the ineffective crisis management strategies that had been adopted by these organisations. The research will focus on identifying the basis of the problem and the strategies that could have been adopted to mitigate the issue (Peters, Peters & Peters, 2020). The research problem is important in context to the business process across different tourism and hospitality organisations because it analyses the crisis management practices that are adopted by these companies. Every company must have a strong crisis management strategy which helps them to mitigate the challenges and obstacles that they face during the business process which are not in their control. If the problem remains unsold then the business organisations in this sector within Australia will be vulnerable to future natural disasters and pandemics which could impact the tourism and hospitality business (Teasdale & Panegyres, 2023). A number of crisis management strategies will be augmented within the literature review which will provide an understanding of their effectiveness in crisis situations.
Literature Review
Background of the crisis and its impact
According to Semeja (2022), Australia had been affected by a recent bushfire which is considered a natural disaster and cannot be predicted by business organisations across any sector. The COVID-19 pandemic was another crisis which had a negative impact on all the tourism and hospitality companies within Australia.
Lessons learned from recent events.
According to Celermajer et al. (2021), the bushfire in particular had a direct impact on the tourism and hospitality sector of Australia where a number of tourism destinations were shut down due to evacuations, road closures, and poor air quality. Several planned visits of tourists had to be prolonged which had a significant financial loss on the tourism and hospitality companies. There was a sharp decline in bookings and revenue as several tourists who might have planned to visit Australia at that point in time had to postpone it which impacted the predicted revenue for these companies. Some of these organisations included Qantas, Tourism Australia, Destination NSW, Australian Tourism Export Council, and others. However, Collins-Kreiner & Ram (2021) believe that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic had a more long-lasting effect on the revenue sources for different tourism and hospitality companies. The government of Australia had implemented certain lockdown measures with the safety of the people in mind which resulted in the widespread closure of hotels, restaurants, and popular tourist destinations. The organisations even had to lose a lot of workers and employees which impacted their workforce strength during the commencement of their business after the lockdown was lifted.
Importance of crisis management
According to Stren, Vaag & Lund (2024), crisis management is considered a process through which an organisation predicts a future outcome which could have an impact on the operations of the organisation. This process involves setting a particular counterstrategy which could help the organisation in surviving that crisis without facing much loss. Adopting crisis management could have helped the organisations limit the number of bookings for a particular period of time and change the focal point of the bookings after a few months with the discounting strategy. This could help tourism organisations not only retain customers but also get time to recover from the crisis that they could face. However, John-Eke & Eke (2020) believe that crisis management practices can generally be implemented with effective communication where certain delegations and necessary where each manager or employee should know their role during the crisis. For example, several hospitality companies within Australia could have reduced the level of inventory that they had during the time of lockdown by predicting its occurrence as soon as the virus had spread globally. Companies that have adopted crisis management as a strategy have benefited during these difficult situations which helps them to pursue the business with the same stability once the crisis is over. Crisis management has become an important strategy especially for tourism and hospitality organisations because this sector faces a lot of political and economic fluctuations within Australia which directly impacts their ability to adapt to the changing preferences of the customers.
Strategies for Resilience
As per Abdalla, Alarabi & Hendawi (2021), there are a number of crisis management strategies which could have affected the tourism and hospitality organisations during the crisis of the bushfire and the COVID-19 pandemic. One popular strategy among them is diversification, where the companies could focus on expanding their product offerings and target markets which would help in reducing dependence on specific segments or geographical regions. Investments being made in terms of adopting different technologies have also been considered a popular crisis management strategy where several organisations can communicate better with their customers with the help of different technological innovations.
Teasdale & Panegyres (2023), believes that flexible booking policies can be an important class management strategy especially for the tourism and hospitality sector of Australia because it can help in reducing the amount of loss that the company has suffered during a time of pandemic or natural disaster. Collaboration and partnerships with different organisations outside the sector could help in forming strategies which could retain the customers better.
If tourism and hospitality companies like Qantas, Tourism Australia, Destination NSW, Australian Tourism Export Council, and others within Australia adopt the above-mentioned crisis management strategies then they will have the flexibility to bring certain changes to their business model at different crisis points. It will also help preserve the faith and trust that customers have in the companies for building their brand image across Australia and the global market as well.
Conclusion
The data collected within the literature review was quite effective in analysing the research problem. Lack of awareness about Crisis management strategies has been evidenced in context to the recent crisis situations that the tourism and hospitality sector of Australia had faced which were the bushfire and the pandemic. There was a gap within the literature review where sufficient articles were not procured on the practical implementation of crisis management strategies for a tourism organisation within Australia. However, this gap does not impact on the accuracy of the research because the problem statement has been critically analysed by understanding the current situation of the tourism and Hospitality organisations in Australia.
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