Natural disasters which affect tourism

Very important tourism destinations, High Tatras in Slovakia, Hungarian and Rumanian mountains, were destroyed by huge natural disasters. To preserve the harmony and balance between the tourism industry and nature, and to defend against disasters, the best strategies can be found based on sustainable tourism and destination planning.

The author proposes recommendations to help identify the correct solutions. Keywords: tourism, natural hazards, disasters, Carpathian Basin. Other papers in this volume. Registered in England as a limited company No. Connect with WIT Press:. Toggle navigation. My Basket. Search Papers Books. All Papers Books Advanced.

Exploring how the tourism sector at the destination country recovers in the long-run is beyond the objective of the paper. Dyadic and origin-year fixed effects are included in the model but estimates are not reported. Robust standard errors clustered by pairs. In general, for all the estimates, control variables considered as determinants of tourism flows are statistically significant and with the expected sign.

The coefficient for the RTA ijt , that controls for the existence of a trade agreement between country pairs during specific years, is also significant and positive.

In this case, due to the binary nature of the explanatory variable used, the estimated coefficient slightly higher that 0. Finally, and as expected, the variable related to low levels of security and safety at the destination country Crime jt shows a negative effect, indicating that an increase in the number of homicides per 10, inhabitants reduces tourist arrivals.

In reference to the different types of disasters, for events associated with Tsunamis , Floods and Volcanoes , all the significant parameters are found to be negative, indicating that these three types of disasters constitute substantial negative motivators for prospective visitors.

A more detailed examination of coefficients highlights that volcanic eruptions appear most deterring to international tourists. This circumstance could be related to the severity of the damage caused by volcanic eruptions, including potentially irreversible damage to infrastructure or the complete loss of a natural asset. Wildfires, Earthquakes, Industrial Accidents , and Storms present mixed effects on international tourist arrivals.

For all types of disasters, and when economic costs are considered, a negative and significant relationship is found. In other words, the economic damage from these events, for example to infrastructure, is likely to reduce tourist arrivals. Wildfires appear as the second most detrimental type of disaster when measured in economic damage, leading to an expected fall of 0.

Interestingly and perhaps paradoxically, a significant positive relationship is evident between the number of people affected by Wildfires and tourist arrivals. For every million affected people, an increase between 0. Consequently, and considering the negative effect of economic damage mentioned above, the net effect of Wildfires on tourism should consider the two different types of disaster impact measures. Earthquakes show a similar negative impact compared with Tsunamis see above in terms of the economic costs of the disaster, with falls around 0.

However, the other impact metrics do not show a negative relationship. In terms of number of fatalities, there is even an increase in tourism for the number of deaths per people by 0. Thus, the overall impact of an earthquake is a combination of decreases in response to economic damage and number of deaths. Industrial Accidents and Storms show similar patterns in that there is a positive relationship between the number of fatalities and affected people, but a negative relationship between the economic impact of the disaster and tourism arrivals.

For example, for Storms there is a decrease in arrivals by 0. Droughts emerged as the only type of disaster that did not show a significantly negative relationship between disaster cost and tourism, but instead arrivals were significantly linked to the two other disaster impact metrics. It is perhaps not surprising that the relationship between disaster costs and tourism is not significant for Drought. Overall, it is less likely that drought conditions produce direct impacts on tourism-relevant infrastructures and supplies, as tourism businesses might absorb the extra costs of supplying water during water constrained times.

There could be indirect costs, for example due to more expensive food supplies, but such effects do not seem to result in significant changes in visitation. Epidemics , Landslides , Cold waves , and Heat waves do not achieve significant results for any of the six regressions considered, and for this reason they were not considered in the final estimation presented in Table 1.

In the case of Epidemics , and Landslides we should note that these two variables have a strong structural component. For instance, epidemic episodes, such as Cholera, Dengue, and Ebola, as well as land movements with consequences on people are recurrent in the same types of countries at different times, but rarely are these factors extended to other countries. The case of Cold and Heat waves is different.

It should be noted how travel booking decisions especially in international travel are often taken months in advance, when no reliable weather predictions exist. Although it is possible to cancel travel plans in case of extreme temperatures, tourist might assume the conditions are temporary and unlikely to impact their trip.

In terms of longer lasting risk perceptions of a destination, heat or cold waves might not be seen as particularly threatening, and hence easily forgotten. Visitors might expect that their tourism service provider is dealing with adverse conditions, for example by providing air conditioning or heating. Instead, extreme temperatures are more likely to impact local people e.

Regarding the distribution of the potential effects of each one of the disasters during the next 12 months columns from one to three and during the next 6 months columns from four to six no significant but only minor differences are found.

Additionally, different attempts to discriminate disaster by geographical regions did not yield significantly different conclusions. As mentioned earlier and in order to explore the bidirectional effects between disaster events and tourism flows, a second research strategy is implemented.

Based on two initial general regressions one for each of the delay periods considered , including all the considered variables, a reduction is undertaken in order to get the specific regressions presented in Table 5. Regarding the distribution of the potential consequences of each type of disaster during the next 12 months columns one to three and during the next 6 months columns four to six , in general, no significant differences are found.

With the exception of Floods and Storms , the coefficients for the remaining disasters in absolute terms are higher for the 12 month impact regressions than for the 6 months ones, thus, indicating that effects are probably better captured by longer time lags. In contrast, the effects of Floods and Storms seem to have a shorter life span, since the 6 month timeframe captures a higher impact.

The analysis of the different disaster impacts reveals how, on the one hand, costs always present a negative relationship with international tourist arrivals. This confirms that the economic costs of a disaster are an important measure for tourism managers, probably because of the inherent damage to local infrastructure that is captured. On the other hand, the impact of some types of disaster evaluated in terms of deaths shows a positive relationship with tourist arrivals.

This does not mean that the occurrence of these disasters will have a net positive effect on the arrival of tourists, since the negative effect of the associated costs must be taken into account when deriving an overall estimate of impact. As outlined earlier, the number of deaths could be related with the arrival of people for humanitarian reasons, or with a flow of people who travel to see and support friends and relatives affected by the event.

This could present a significant effect in relative terms for those countries with a low base level of arrivals. The total effect also should consider the impacts of the number of affected people that for some disasters have a reducing effect Droughts, Tsunamis and Volcanoes , while for others there seems to be an increase in the number of tourists Industrial Accidents, Wildfires and Storms.

Natural disasters and unexpected events have wide reaching effects on all spheres of life, including tourism. From a theoretical point of view, it has been assumed that a negative relationship between disasters and inbound tourism dominates e. However, because of some motivating factors identified in the literature, and due to the methodology and definition used by the UNWTO in collecting international tourist arrivals, an increase in visitation after a disaster seems also plausible.

It is therefore of great importance for policymakers to improve their understanding of how disaster events affect visitor demand. This research highlights the need to consider different types of disasters and their varied consequences when assessing the consequences for tourism. The empirical research presented in this paper draws on two sets of data to explore in depth the relationship between international tourist arrivals and global disasters, measured through three different impact metrics costs, deaths and affected people.

The effects that these different disasters might have on inbound flows at a national level were investigated though a gravity model, estimated by panel data with destination-fixed effects and using yearly data. By doing so, spurious potential determinants related to the destination but not the disaster can be avoided.

As a result, however, recurrent disasters affecting the same destination and those with a very short-run effect have not been captured. Findings of this analysis provide evidence that the economic consequences of a disaster in a particular country generally affect international tourism arrivals negatively.

This is likely due to damages to infrastructure, key attractions and a wider weakening of the economy in the host country. All of these reduce the destination ability to cater for tourism, undermine investment into tourism supply, and reduce destination attractiveness, at least in the short-term. At the same time, the analysis reveals that evaluating the tourism impacts of a disaster in terms of deaths and affected people is more ambiguous.

Our research found a dominance of positive effects in the case of deaths related to a disaster. Thus, whilst disaster damage seems to prevent tourists to visit the affected destination, the number of fatalities and affected people seem to be less of a deterrent.

Tourists may not see a risk to their own safety. Whilst generally, this observation might be testimony to tourism resilience, and indeed reassuring for destination managers, there may be situations where continuous tourism demand after a disaster is hindering recovery works or impacting the well-being of residents. Okuyama, It is useful for decision makers to understand that not all disasters cause similar impacts.

The comparison of different disaster types showed, for example, that volcanic eruptions typically cause the most significant and substantial negative impact on tourism. Specifically, for every million people affected by an eruption a fall between 1. Other disasters have smaller and shorter-term impacts e. Floods and Storms. Furthermore, floods and tsunamis are detrimental without nuance, although it is difficult to discerne whether the negative effect is due to the possible destruction or disablement of infrastructure or to the negative image of the destination generated by these types of event.

When a destination is affected by a wildfire, an earthquake, an industrial accident, a storm or a drought, mixed effects may be expected. For example, when these types of disasters result in economic damage, a negative and significant relationship can be established, indicating that damage to infrastructure and built assets, and maybe business capability, is likely to reduce tourist arrivals.

Finally, this research revealed that some types of events are unlikely to have a major effect on arrivals, for example an unexpected epidemic, a landslide, a cold wave and a heat wave. It should be noted how these natural disasters are characterized by little or no impact on infrastructure and no long-term risk to tourists after the event has finished.

Strategies used to predict natural disasters and mitigate hazard risks in the first place need to be deployed to minimize the impacts. Examples include the implementation of appropriate building codes, zoning regulations, and emergency training and preparedness for key stakeholders. New policies and practices may require additional resources, but investments into preparedness are likely to generate positive returns in the long term.

In general, the empirical results in this paper confirm that disaster events are challenging news for tourism managers who need to deal with an unexpected fall in tourism demand. Clearly, economic damage from an unexpected event leads to some reductions in tourist arrivals. In those cases, efforts by destination managers should focus on the recovery of necessary infrastructure and business capability.

Leadership may come from government agencies, destination management organizations, or businesses themselves. In other words, response and recovery is often led by individuals who have a strong commitment to, and engagement with, the affected community. For some events, it is not necessarily the economic damage that is the most significant impact, but it could be the number of people affected or killed.

For some disaster types, for example wildfires and storms, this research even established a positive impact. The positive relationship between number of tourists and affected people of fatalities by some disasters implies that these can attract visitors to the destination, a circumstance that should be taken into account by the managers of the destination. There are many different reasons why visitors might want to visit a destination that had been affected by a disaster e.

This research has several limitations, including the availability, accuracy and granularity of data, which is outside the control of the research team. It could be argued that some impacts on tourism are significant, yet short-lived. Given that the data used here is provided on an annual basis, short-term effects are likely to be missed or under-estimated in this research.

Besides the limitations about the estimation method and the nature of the data of the UNWTO we have imposed a homogenization for each disaster. That means that a specific disaster in a developed country has the same effect than in an less developed one. In reality, this might not be the case. Consequently, results obtained in this paper should be considered as average responses.

Future research should further explore this matter and investigate if differences among countries in reference to their level of development exist. Our attempt to discriminate the different disaster by region did not obtain significant results. Susanne Becken as an expert in sustainable tourism and climatic change issues has contributed with the knowledge of the specific literature of natural hazards and potential effects on tourism and Maria Santana Gallego as an expert within the fields of gravity models in a special way in the design of the methodology and in the exploitation of the results.

He has also been responsible for the first model estimations. His research interests include tourism demand modelling and environmental issues with special interest in climatic change issues. Jaume has led different research projects in Spain and Europe. Susanne has led a large number of research programmes and consulting projects in Asia Pacific in the area of climate change, risk management and sustainable tourism. She contributes through various industry and Government advisory roles and panels, and is on the editorial boards of nine tourism journals.

She teaches tourism economics and macroeconomics. Her research interests include quantitative analysis of tourism and gravity models. National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Tour Manag. Published online Feb 1. Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer. Carretera Valldemossa km 7. All rights reserved. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVIDrelated research that is available on the COVID resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source.

This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract Tourism is shaped by a wide range of factors and forces, including exogenous ones that have no direct link with the tourism sector. Keywords: Disaster, Unexpected event, Hazard, Gravity model. Graphical abstract. Open in a separate window. Introduction Earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, bush fires, hurricanes, droughts and heatwaves have always occurred. Literature review The general perception might point towards an increase in the frequency of natural disasters over time, but this assumption needs to be verified.

Methodology and data 3. Gravity model for tourism demand This research develops a gravity model for international tourism flows to quantify the effects of different types of natural and man-made disasters on tourist arrivals to the affected countries. Data selection As dependent variable, L n T o u i j t , we consider the natural logarithm of international tourist arrivals from country i to country j in year t. Table 1 Disaster typology and main descriptive magnitudes — Some tourist destinations in the Northern Luzon were submerged in floods that officials say will take a month to subside.

Typhoon Mangkhut is not an isolated case, Japan, especially Osaka, suffered greatly following Typhoon Jebi and Lombok area in Indonesia suffered from a series of earthquakes as well as the Hurricane Florence that affected the East Coast.

And all of this in just the past month. According to the World Economic Forum, the tourism industry accounts for 9. Moreover, the industry has potential for further growth, with the current 1.

For the past few years, the impact of natural disasters has been more profound. This can be attributed to the changing weather patterns around the world brought about climate change. Tourism is regarded as the lifeblood of some regions depending on the influx of local and international tourists.

As an industry, several factors affect tourism both positively and negatively like natural disasters that occur unexpectedly. The effect of natural disasters varies depending on the magnitude of the disaster. Earthquakes and hurricanes can destroy structures that change the landscape of the affected region. Natural disasters can also hamper tourism. As mentioned above, flights are cancelled, local transportation is paralyzed, and tourist attractions may be damaged.

In a chain reaction, the economy also suffered, especially in regions that depend heavily on tourism. As natural disasters intensify and become more frequent, they are getting costlier as well.

Natural disasters cannot be prevented unless we overhaul our environmental problems. It is important for the tourism industry to take into account the possibility of natural disasters to ensure business sustainability. Moreover, it is good to welcome the idea of avoiding the creation of tourism sites in areas that are likely to be affected by natural disasters due to their geographic location.

Aside from carefully choosing tourism sites, it is important for tourism companies to have a disaster emergency plan in place.

This will make it easy for the place as a whole to recover faster from the disaster and at the same time, it will mitigate the damage from the disaster. While natural disasters have an adverse effect on tourism, it is not all bad news. In some places, natural disasters bring more tourists.

For example, the village of Boscastle in Cornwall, England witnessed the worst flash floods in destroying everything in sight. However, within the next few years, the central government spent millions of dollars in reconstruction which brought in more jobs and businesses. Moreover, the media coverage of the disaster and rehabilitation of the place brought publicity to the place, which in turn increased the number of tourists.

Similar can be said to Haiti when it was struck with a 7. However, such instances are far and few. Lastly, disasters tend to invite enthusiasts like storm chasers and photographers that want to capture the destructive beauty of calamities.

In most cases, natural disasters have a negative impact on the tourism industry and the economy it supports.