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The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and consequent economic shutdown have had severe impacts on the tourism industry. Acquiring an understanding of the impacts and ongoing response procedures is crucial to recovery planning. The purpose of this study is to explore the management procedures undertaken by sport tourism stakeholders during the COVID-19 pandemic in Indiana, USA, a state that relies heavily on sport tourism for its economic vibrancy.

A constructivist grounded theory approach was adopted. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 high-rank managers in sport tourism organizations.

Continued uncertainty, psychological and financial distress were found to be the main challenges. Contingency planning, adaptability and focus on doable tasks were the core elements of the strategic response plan. Resilience management, particularly social and financial, appeared to be key in the recovery process. A stronger return was predicted with technological advancements and new collaborations. Intra-destination collaboration and creative programs were found to be key in the long-term resilience of the destination.

Findings shed light on the challenges faced, response actions undertaken, and the projected future which helps to understand the stories behind decisions and proposals, identify the gaps, and plan the best possible practices. Recommendations for leveraging sports to revitalize the destinations and help businesses survive the crisis are provided that can guide sport tourism communities on their path to recovery from COVID-19.

The purpose of this paper is to develop nine criteria for tourism disaster resilience scorecard for destinations (TDRSD) by using the “disaster resilience scorecard for cities, based on UNISDR’s ten essentials”. As a surrogate for the city, the Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is used at the destination level to manage and oversee disasters within the perspective of a visitor. The initial section of the paper revises the scorecard to adapt to the destination, while the second part of the paper applies the scorecard to a specific city destination. The TDRSD scorecard for CVBs was used to evaluate the destination of Manta, Ecuador.

The approach included four stages. The first stage was to use a Delphi technique to evaluate and adapt the UNIDSRR scorecard to a destination (tourism) context. The second stage included conducting interviews with members of the Manta CVB and Mesa 5 (Emergency Management Department of Manta). Consequently, each answer was paired with support for the item and criteria score. Finally, the weak and strong scores were identified for each essential and match them up with recommendations and trends available in literature.

This study set out to do three things: suggest that a similar scorecard is necessary for destinations; adapt the UNIDSR scorecard to a destination focus; and apply the TDRSD to Manta, Ecuador. Overall, these goals were met. But most interestingly, findings suggest some troubling outcomes.

The study allowed to undercover gaps in the current risk management plan of the destination, while providing an evaluation of the engineering resilience of the tourism sector of Manta in case of a disaster.

Tourism, if properly managed, can represent an opportunity for economic development and social growth especially for territories that have infrastructure deficits and economic problems. This is the case of rural and mountain areas, many of which in Italy correspond to the so-called ‘inner areas’, spaces for which the public sector has developed a specific strategy in recent years. Within these fragile areas, tourism planning plays a crucial role because, more than in other spaces, it must identify balanced goals between fostering economic development and safeguarding local identities. The point of equilibrium can be reached through strategies of resilience, that is, by adopting collective response-and-adaptation tools that allow to manage tourism by mitigating its impact on the local sociocultural organization and to restore sustainable mechanisms of operation of the tourism system.

The communities of the Madonie, a rural and mountainous area close to Palermo, taking advantage of the strategy for inner areas, have decided to start processes of institutional innovation through an intermunicipal governance and also to promote new partnership networks to strengthen the capacity of resilience and development of the territorial system as a ‘green community’. Some territorial planning actions specifically concern the tourism sector, as in the case of the organization of a destination management community and the creation of an ecomuseum.

This chapter analyses some experiences recently conducted by the Madonie communities, which are trying to reconcile, also through planning tools, economic growth and landscape protection.

Crisis management has developed as an established field of scholarly research in tourism over the last three decades. More recently, the concept of resilience has emerged within this body of literature as a longer-term planning process. However, important knowledge gaps remain, especially with regards to the strategic responses of small tourism businesses in destinations prone to repeated crises.

This chapter reviews the literature related to crisis management and resilience in tourism.

Key knowledge gaps are outlined and discussed in the context of tourism research related to crisis management and resilience, with a specific emphasis on research related to small tourism businesses.

Although crisis management and resilience are fields of research that continue to generate a considerable amount of scholarly enquiry in tourism, particularly with studies related to the impacts of terrorism on tourism destinations and, more recently, the short- and longer-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on tourism, there is very little research related to the role of small tourism businesses in this context, in spite of their key role in the tourism system of destinations around the world.

This report aims to present a detailed evaluation of resilience planning of the ASEAN-5 tourism sector to national disasters. The project analyses the challenges to the tourism industry in the ASEAN-5 (Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and Malaysia) countries due to national disasters (economic crisis, health hazards, natural calamity and/or act of terrorism) and the effectiveness of the measures taken in response to disastrous events.

The project analyses the effect of national disasters over a 10-year period in the ASEAN-5 countries on tourism economy and effectiveness of government action in resilience planning. The study uses two research questions to comment on comparative effectiveness of resilience planning in the ASEAN-5 nations.

The findings of this study revealed that national disasters affect a county’s tourism sector performance and its economy negatively. In particular, national disasters have harmful effects for a country’s tourism arrivals, tourism receipts, gross domestic product and unemployment. The findings reveal that regardless of geographical closeness of the ASEAN-5 countries, each experienced different effects in terms of national disasters and each used different government recovery measures.

This paper builds a knowledge management system for national disasters and the tourism sector. It provides a ready reference of timeliness and effectiveness of measures and to develop a framework for future tourist disaster management systems. Specifically, the relationships between the tourism indicators explored in this study contribute significantly to the knowledge on how these indicators interact to affect the tourism industry and the country’s economy. Furthermore, this information would act as a guide for countries to design and implement resilience planning and disaster management response.

Resilience planning is emerging as a key area under sustainable development. This report presents an evaluation of resilience planning of the ASEAN-5 tourism sector to national disasters.

This paper explores the challenges faced by the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the tourism industry in building capabilities toward being resilient in the wake of crises through a stakeholder perspective.

This study identifies the barriers to building resilience through detailed literature review and expert interviews. A total of 13 barriers were identified and were classified into into three main categories, namely economic barriers, organizational barriers, and stakeholder barriers. Subsequently, primary data were collected to emperically validate the nature and strength of interactions between these barriers and to quantitatively identify their impact.

The study identifies that in long run, stakeholder barriers are the most significant in building capabilities toward being resilient in the wake of crisis. However, for initial recovery, economic barriers need to be focused. Subsequently, organizational capabilities needs to be developed through stakeholder support.

The study provides actionable insights to help MSMEs in the tourism industry to recover economically and to help them build lasting capabilities through organizational capability development and stakeholder support.

This study is novel on two aspects. First, the study investigates role of MSMEs in the tourism industry and how MSMEs are pivotal in helping the industry recover from a crisis by being resilient. Second, the role of stakeholders in the MSMEs sector in tourism is underexplored area and this study adds value to this nascent literature.

The purpose of this paper is to look at the potential synergies between tourism and landscapes and examine the potential contribution of tourism to build social-ecological resilience in the Dutch Wadden.

The authors reveal how a social-ecological systems perspective can be used to conceptualize the Wadden as a coupled and dynamic system. This paper is a conceptual analysis that applies this approach to the Dutch Wadden. The data used for the inquiry primarily comes from a literature review.

The authors argue that the social-ecological systems perspective is a useful approach and could be used to improve the governance of multi-functional socio-ecological systems in coastal areas. Opportunities for synergies between tourism and landscapes have been overlooked. The authors consider that tourism and nature protection are potentially compatible and that the synergies should be identified.

This paper is only a conceptual application rather than an empirical case study. Further research to actually apply the methodology is needed.

Managers of protected areas should consider applying a social-ecological systems approach.

The views of a wide variety of stakeholders should be considered in landscape planning.

The value of this paper lies in the articulation of the social-ecological systems perspective as a way to identify and understand the complex interactions between tourism and landscape, and the potential synergies between them.

2020 was a year marked by unprecedented health, social and economic global challenges caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and understandably travel and tourism were among the most affected sectors.

In a world where disease outbreaks and pandemics are expected to become increasingly common, negative consequences related to other epidemics may be mitigated in the future by knowing how tourist destinations have handled a crisis of a much greater magnitude than those faced before.

Based on the long tradition of southern European tourist destinations, secondary sources are used for data processing and analysis that will help piece together an accurate picture of the tourist government policies and the alternative measures taken by those countries during the first months of the pandemic that may be useful to build resilient tourist destinations.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze how these countries managed this pandemic crisis, in order to mitigate future negative impacts from other pandemic crises and further potential Covid-19 waves and to reflect on how they may become better resilient destinations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the changing pattern of climatic conditions is likely to impact tourism in Small island developing states (SIDS). Further, the study suggests appropriate management practices that could help in tackling the consequences of climate change on the tourism sector in SIDS.

Recently published articles and reports are analysed in relation to the effects of climate change on the tourism sector, and approaches to improve the resilience of tourism in SIDS.

The study has discovered the likely effects of climate change on the tourism business and found a high possibility of a decline in the tourism-based economy as an outcome. Furthermore, the study found that the absence of institutional alliances, government backing, resilient policy and advanced technological mechanisms are driving the associated risks of climate change in tourism.

The framework presented can assist tourism stakeholders to plan, prepare, mitigate and build resilience against the effects of climate variability on the tourism business in SIDS.

This study presents some practical measures for tourism stakeholders to enable them to reduce the effects of climate change on tourism activities in Small island developing states (SIDS).

The present study used a process approach to examine how a small entrepreneurial family business in the tourism industry evolved during different stages of the Covid-19 pandemic and across different dimensions of resilience.

The research strategy consisted of a real-time longitudinal case study during the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil, based on interviews conducted with the founders of the business.

The results show how the firm responded to the pandemic and moved through different stages – interruption, loss, resumption, and recovery – as the crisis evolved. During each stage, there were manifestations of different dimensions of organizational resilience: anticipation/awareness, coping and adaptation. The entrepreneurs mobilized several capabilities – emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and relational – during the different stages and across different dimensions to face and respond to the pandemic.

The contributions of the study stem from the lack of research on how small entrepreneurial family businesses in the tourism industry are impacted by disruptive events of long duration and multiple cycles. Specifically, the study contributes to the understanding of how this type of firm responds to these crises, mobilizing different capabilities at different stages and across different dimensions of organizational resilience.