The secondary crisis communication of Occupy Central on Weibo: A response to Denis Tolkach

This is a response to the rejoinder by Tolkach (2018) to Luo and Zhai's (2017) paper (“I will never go to Hong Kong again” How the secondary crisis communication of “Occupy Central” on Weibo shifted to a tourism boycott). The authors recognize Tolkach's suggestion on academic debates but hold different opinions to his arguments. Thus, further clarification is provided to Tolkach's two main concerns: the impact of Occupy Central on Hong Kong tourism and sentiment analysis of censored material. This response emphasizes that Luo and Zhai primarily discussed the secondary crisis communication and public emotions that arose in the Chinese social media over the events in Hong Kong, and not the events themselves. Additionally this rejoinder provides more information on Tourism between mainland China and Hong Kong, the environment of Chinese social media, and academic research progress in mainland China. It also advocates an “empathetic understanding” in cross-cultural academic dialogue.     

Turn it around in crisis communication: An ABM approach

Collective emotion recovery has been a challenge in destination crisis communication in social media environments. This exploratory study adopts agent-based modeling (ABM) to simulate collective emotion online sharing induced by tourism-related human-induced preventable crises, and its interplay with destination management organization (DMO) responses in a Chinese social media context. The results show that a tipping point of negative emotional outbursts exists. Public negative emotions could possibly be mitigated by positive and detailed responses before or at the time of the outburst. Otherwise, sustained and consistent responses are required for restoration. This study contributes to tourism crisis communication research by introducing a new method to reveal the evolution of secondary crisis communication from a complex system view and provide practical implications.     

#Strongerthanwinston: Tourism and crisis communication through Facebook following tropical cyclones in Fiji

Because the tourism industry can be affected by various natural disasters, the media landscape with increasing social media, brings to tourism new possibilities and challenges in its preparing for, and handling, such disasters. The literature has paid little attention to social media's part in such phenomena. Therefore, this study explores how social media are used by hotels following Tropical Cyclone Winston in Fiji using mixed methods, based on interviews (n = 12) and hotels' real time Facebook posts (n = 1288). While we find that social media were underused in preparing for the disaster and response that followed, it played a crucial role in raising funds and donations during the recovery phase. We apply the social mediated disaster resilience (SMDR) model to allow this study to fill the knowledge gap in organizational disaster resilience literature. We show how social media are integrated in resilience-building and its potential for increasing hotel resilience.     

Exploring the impacts of internal crisis communication on tourism employees insights from a mixed-methods study

Internal crisis communication is a critical yet understudied component in crisis management in tourism and hospitality management. Guided by the language expectancy theory, this study tested the effects of message frequency and transparency on internal crisis communication outcomes among tourism employees. This study adopted a mixed-methods approach. The qualitative component included 20 interviews, and the quantitative component involved a national survey of 804 completed responses from tourism workers. The qualitative findings showed that following the onset of a major crisis, tourism employees often expect timely and transparent communication from their employers. Effective communication enhances the employer-employee relationships and employers' commitment to the organization. The quantitative findings supported these notions and indicated that transparent internal crisis communication reduces turnover intentions. The findings provide insights into conceptualizing internal crisis communication in tourism by incorporating message frequency and transparency. This paper also offers practical implications and suggests several future research areas.     

When,where, and with whom during crisis: The effect of risk perceptions and psychological distance on travel intentions

We investigate how risk perceptions and psychological distance impacted people's travel intentions during Covid-19. Our findings reveal that traveling to a high-risk destination increased people's risk perceptions of Covid-19, and their risk perceptions at the destination, which, in turn, reduced people's travel intentions. We identify temporal, spatial, and social distance (the “when, where, and with whom” of traveling) as moderators of these effects; while social distance moderates the effect of risk, on risk perceptions, temporal and spatial distance moderate the effect of risk perceptions on travel intentions. We outline theoretical contributions and implications for tourism during crisis.     

Hospitality crisis management practices: The case of Indian luxury hotels

This study examines hospitality crisis management practices within the context of the Indian hospitality industry. The study is a replication of a study previously conducted in Israel. The study employs a questionnaire that evaluates the importance and usage of four themes of practices: marketing, hotel maintenance, human resources and governmental assistance. The findings illustrate which practices managers consider important and which practices managers actually use during a crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.     

An analysis of user-generated crisis frames: Online public responses to a tourism crisis

A gap exists in the research on how online media frame a tourism crisis and the effects on travel intentions. This research proposed a basic crisis frames model for public online communications including nature (N), causes (C), processes (P), and results (R). Chinese online public opinions on the Thailand drownings in 2018 were collected and the Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) technique explored the responses within the data. The results showed that: (1) crisis frames had a dynamic impact on negative travel intentions, and the effects and variance contributions of frames differed; (2) disturbance information produced by a negative communication incident from the destination was a factor promoting the accumulation of online public opinion; and (3) online data of public opinion and the VAR model are appropriate for research on tourism crisis information communication. This research provides new insights and a method for investigating tourism crises and dynamic responses in online communication.     

The response of hotel performance to international tourism development and crisis events

This study uses panel regression tests to examine the response of hotel performance to international tourism development and crisis events in Taiwan. Hotel performance measures are revenue (revenue per available room and occupancy rate), profitability (return on assets and return on equity) and stock performance. The crises were the earthquake on September 21, 1999 (the 9/21 earthquake), the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in the US (the 9/11 terrorist attacks) and the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome on April 22, 2003 (the SARS outbreak). This study makes four major contributions. First, test results confirm that international tourism development (ITD), proxied by the growth of total inbound tourist arrivals, has a more direct influence on hotel sales and profitability than it does on hotel stock performance. Second, this study identifies that the absence of a strong tie between ITD and hotel stock returns that was found in previous studies is due to the time-varying discount rate caused by investors’ changing expectations for the prospect of future cash flows from holding hotel stocks. Third, this study finds new evidence that while the poor performance of hotel stocks caused by the 9/21 earthquake and the 9/11 terrorist attacks was attributed to the loss of hotel sales revenue, the adverse effect of the SARS outbreak on hotel stock returns is attributed not only to decreased hotel sales revenue but also to the increased discount rate. Lastly, this study is the first to investigate whether the response of hotel stock returns to ITD depends on the state of economy and concludes that the response of hotel stock performance to ITD in business cycle contraction is statistically different from that in business cycle expansion. Further, although the influence of ITD on hotel stock performance is still irrelevant during expansion periods, ITD can significantly enhance hotel stock returns during contraction periods.     

Advance booking across channels: The effects on dynamic pricing

This research analyzes the effects of advance booking and channel type on hotel rates. While this relationship has been addressed in the literature, most studies take a partial approach by focusing only on one distribution channel or one destination. This study fills this gap by analyzing the price dynamics for four channels and multiple destinations. The data set consists of 39,363 bookings for 1085 hotels over 27 consecutive months. We used two-stage least squares to solve potential endogeneity issues, and the results proved that distribution channel, hotel type and hotel size have an influence on the effect of advance booking on hotel rates. Critical managerial implications are discussed.     

The role of business model innovation in the hospitality industry during the COVID-19 crisis

The hospitality industry worldwide is among the hardest-hit industries from the COVID-19 lockdowns. Initial theoretical and practical observations in the hospitality industry indicate that business model innovation (BMI) might be a solution to recover from and successfully cope with the COVID-19 crisis. Interestingly, some firms in the hospitality industry already started to successfully adapt their business models. This study explores the why and how of these successful recovery attempts through BMI by conducting a multiple case study of six hospitality firms in Austria. We rely on interview data from managers together with one of their main stammgasts for each case, which we triangulate with secondary data for the analysis. Findings show that BMI is applied during and after the crisis to create new revenue streams and secure a higher level of liquidity, with an important role of stammgasts.     

Business resilience in times of growth and crisis

Natural disaster, economic recession and political turmoil pose major challenges to local tourism in developing countries. To address such challenges, this article investigates the multiple ways in which local tourism businesses respond to crises and the resources these businesses employ to build resilience in an unpredictable business environment. The data underlying this article have been generated in a longitudinal study of small-scale businesses in the accommodation sector in the city of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Based on qualitative research, comprising ethnographic methods, the study reveals that local tourism businesses show remarkable resilience during the decade of crisis that affected the Indonesian tourism industry. This resilience has to be understood in terms of the businesses’ embeddedness in a package of livelihood strategies.     

Dual-route communication of destination websites

To understand the communication route of destination websites, this study employed the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) which is a dual-route, multi-process model of persuasive message processing. That is, this study proposed a theoretical model for the dual-route persuasive process based on ELM, investigated its antecedents and consequences, and identified the moderating effect of involvement. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is used to test the validity of the conceptual model. The results indicate that highly involved people are inclined to elaborate on information (central route), while people with low involvement are likely to make judgments based on simple cues (peripheral route). Website design characteristics are an important antecedent of both central and peripheral-route persuasions. Attitudes resulting from careful consideration via the central route are more predictive of conation and behavior (further information searching and travel intentions) than those formed via the peripheral route. The study provides a foundation for further tourism research investigating the Internet as a persuasive tool, and suggests strategies for website designers.     

Tourism,big data,and a crisis of analysis

Efforts to aggregate data comprehensively have prompted a crisis of analysis. Such a crisis presents itself when big data use within the tourism industry increasingly treats individuals and their subjective practices as mere objects. Heightened recognition of tourism as a series of distinctive and creative human actions is counterbalanced by an exuberance for impersonal mass quantification. A crisis of analysis is identified through a qualitative study of tourism-focused trade journal articles that address big data. This type of crisis reflects the rise of a positivistic, business-driven way of knowing that creates tensions within the tourism industry. The position and power of individuals – tourists and practitioners – is steadily undermined and capital accumulation becomes threatened due to big data use.     

Living in a wildfire: The relationship between crisis management and community resilience in a tourism-based destination

This study contributes to the understanding of the relationship between crisis management procedures and local resilience responses. Utilizing the context of the 416 wildfire in southwest Colorado during the summer of 2018, this study proposes that community resilience is a process that is impacted by the decision-making surrounding the reduction of the disaster impact. The results of this study argue that interpreting the community response to crisis management from the lens of resilience will allow decision-makers to more thoroughly understand the impact on the community and the related tourism industry. This research proposes a path of integration between crisis management and community response to be used for navigating the challenges that occur during uncontrolled natural disasters impacting community sustainability.     

SOS to my followers! The role of marketing communications in reinforcing online travel community value during times of crisis

The context faced by online travel agencies (OTAs) during the pandemic is nothing short of dramatic. During the state of emergency, marketing communications have proven essential to maintain emotional ties with online communities even though sales have plummeted to zero. This study analyses the social network communication strategy during the worst days of the crisis of two OTAs specialized in selling flights and in distributing activities, excursions, and guided tours at the world's top tourist destinations. This qualitative study, based on the observation of online activity and personal interviews with marketing managers, shows how to respond to a crisis, maintain brand identity and strengthen the support of the online community. With the help of the community and co-creation processes, the sector has been able to reinvent itself and new services have emerged. From selling flights, one of the studied OTAs has now changed to planning trips around the regions.     

Effects of crisis response tone and spokesperson's gender on employer attractiveness

Timely apologies to key publics on social media are becoming an important aspect of crisis recovery but little is known of how the spokesperson’s characteristics and the tone of apology may influence the outcome. Recognising the importance of the need to attract quality workforce, this study examines the impact of social media response to a preventable crisis on organisational attractiveness. Specifically, a 2 (message tone: corporate/formal vs. human/informal) x 2 (spokesperson’s gender: male vs. female) between-subjects factorial design was used to test the effectiveness of an apology. The results suggest a significant moderated mediation effect. We find that account acceptance mediates the relationship between message tone and organisational attractiveness, and this effect is conditional on gender of the spokesperson. The results are relevant to crisis managers and brand managers that seek to attract and retain talents.     

Strategic responses of the Spanish hospitality sector to the financial crisis

The 2008 financial crisis weakened the hospitality sector severely, like other industries. This paper investigates the response of the Spanish hospitality sector to the crisis by analyzing a sample of almost 70% of Madrid hotels. In particular, this research focuses on the connection between the impacts of the crisis, the measures taken to alleviate the crisis and an individual hotel's performance. The study shows that hotels that focus on high quality, brand image and a loyal customer base are best equipped to handle the crisis. Increased spending on marketing also eases the impact of the crisis. Cost-cutting measures characterize the worst performers. Contrary to the results presented in the literature, the crisis had no immediately visible negative impact upon an individual hotel's performance. Therefore, hotels should focus on quality, branding, a reliance on loyal customers and increasing marketing to counteract the crisis.     

A thematic analysis of crisis management in tourism: A theoretical perspective

The hospitality and tourism industry for a variety of reasons is vulnerable to crises of various origins and scope. Thereby, research regarding crises in this industry has received significant attention among scholars. This study presents the results of a qualitative thematic analysis (TA) of the literature concerning crisis management in hospitality and tourism. A total of 207 research publications from 1986 to 2019 were analyzed. The findings revealed eight major themes that emerged in the literature over time. We critically discuss these themes with suggestions and directions for future research in this area. The study also identifies a shortage of scholarly attempt to conceptualize crisis management and thus explores the sensemaking perspective to shed further light on explaining the themes that emerged in the analysis.