Importance of safety and stability in the hospitality industry

Discuss about the Tourism Industry And Disasters.

The Hospitality industry has emerged as one of the most important industries of the recent times and on an annual basis contributes more than trillions of dollars to the world economy. Thus, within a very short time the industry has become the backbone of the economy of several nations of the world. In the present times it is generally seen that the focus of the majority of the nations of the world is on the development of this particular industry with the objective to stabilize their dwindling economy. However, in the present times safety has emerged as one of the most common concerns which this particular industry is facing at the current moment. The various manmade disasters like terrorists activities as well as the natural disasters like earthquakes, landslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and others have impacted the tourism industry in an adverse manner and it is generally seen that the tourists do not like to visit the tourist destinations which are the hosts to recurrent natural as well as manmade disasters. Thus, it would be apt to say that safety and stable environment are the two key requirements of this particular industry.

The recent manmade as well as the natural disasters have made it imperative for the various organizations associated with the hospitality industry to take various kinds of precautionary measures so that the safety as well as the personal wellbeing of the tourists is safeguarded. However, the recently conducted Asia Pacific Survey shows that around 50% of the Hoteliers have not increased their investments regarding ensuring the safety of the tourists even after the 9/11 and other kinds of manmade and natural disasters (Hotel-online.com 2018). The end result of this particular act on the part of the Hoteliers is the fact that it has adversely affected the tourism industry in the recent times in addition to the net decrease in the number of tourists which frequent some of the most popular locations of the world. Some of the most popular disasters which have adversely affected the tourism industry are the 9/11 USA attack, the Bali bombing, the earthquakes of Japan, Tsunami among others. Therefore, there is a growing urge on the part of the hospitality industry as well as the tourists who take the help of the services offered by them to ensure the safety of the tourists by enhancing the safety measures. This is not only likely to enhance the quality of the services provided by these organizations to the tourists who take the help of the services provided by them to the tourists but at the same time is likely to help them to attract more tourists to the services offered by them.

Precautionary measures to ensure safety of tourists

On November 13^th, 2015 a series of coordinated terrorist attacks were carried out in Paris, France. The attack started at 9:16 pm Central European Time, with three suicide bombers striking during a football match at Stade de France in Saint Denis. This attack was followed by several mass shootouts and another suicide bombing in many restaurants and café’s. The terrorists then attacked the Bataclan Theater where the band ‘Eagles of Death Metal’ were performing and the terrorists took hostages there, which later resulted in a confrontation with the police. A total of 130 people were killed by the terrorists and 413 were injured due to the attack (100 of them serious injuries) (Callimachi 2015; Bigo et al 2015; Haug 2015; Castanho 2018.).

On 2011, a massive earthquake hit the pacific coast of Tohoku in Japan at 2:46pm Japan Standard Time on March 11^th. The earthquake had a magnitude of 9.1 on the richterscale with an epicenter of 70 km and hypocenter of 29km, and was the most powerful earthquake to hit the country, and the 4^th most powerful in the world, since 1900. The earthquake created tsunami waves that were about 40 m tall and travelled 10km inland, and shifted the island of Honshu by 2.4m and the earth’s axis by about 10-25cm. The disaster caused 15,985 deaths, 6,165 injuries and 2,539 people to go missing. 228,863 people were reported to be displaced by the incident, 121,776 buildings were declared to be totally collapsed, 280,923 half collapsed and 726,574 partially damaged. The tsunami also caused level 3 meltdowns of three nuclear reactors in Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (Fujii et al. 2011; Mori et al. 2011; Bassett et al., 2016).

The recent natural disasters as well as the terrorist attacks have compelled the various organizations associated with the hospitality industry to rethink about the safety measures which they have in place for the safety of the tourists with the inherent objective to ensure the safety of the tourists who avail their services but also to maintain the continuity of their business. It is a reflection of this particular fact that the various organizations associated with the hospitality need to follow various safety parameters which were quiet unheard of in the earlier times. Thus, the various organizations associated with the hospitality industry need to follow various kinds of PMS systems as well as security intelligence databases to ensure the safety of the tourists. Furthermore, the article “Safety And Security In The Age Of Global Tourism” (2011) by the authors K?vári and Zimányi examines the safety and security of travel and tourism within the travellers and employees. Safety and security issues have been operated as an essential condition of tourism. The authors argues that safety and security issues in tourism start from the beginning of the 1950s and in the last two decades in tourism, there are a lot of issues gained much bigger such as terrorist act, local wars and natural disasters. Also, he’s trying to not only give a theoretical insight the security problems but how to responses and possible action in the crisis situation due to the security problems in the tourism destination. After the tragedy 9/11, security has supported a significant change in order to protect the employees and guests also their belongings as well as the achievements of the industry. The article “Early-warning management of regional tourism emergency: a holistic approach” by the authors Kefan and Jia (2014) was to understand and draw a parallel between current emergencies imposed on world tourism due to several factors primarily the terrorism. Lack of holistic coordination was determined as primary aspect for such situation. This paper utilized the regional tourism emergency response model on the basis of holistic assessment approach and Bayesian network technology for this purpose and found that due to several state responsibilities such as synergic response, responsibility and social values as primary reason for such emergency situation and for explanation, the author utilized the example of Taiwan situation of 2010.

Impact of man-made and natural disasters on the hospitality industry

The terrorist attacks in Paris, France raised significant security concerns for the country as well as for the European Union, especially under the current situation involving refugees entering Europe from conflict states. The European Council considered implementing stricter control and screening of citizen entering or leaving Europe, including passport checks, systematic screening against a biometric database. Following the incident, the French government declared a state of emergency to last for 12 days, and affected the French policies on security and emergency (Bigo et al. 2015; Didier et al. 2015). On 2014, December, the French Government passed four laws to extend its surveillance abilities, namely: the Anti-Terrorism law, Military Programming law, National Surveillance law and Intelligence law. Following the March 11^th earthquake, the Japanese government implemented various legislations and emergency measures to help the victims and to mitigate the nuclear crisis and also to manage the debris from the disaster undertaking reconstructive work, and preparing the country for future disasters. The Disaster Response Basic law was amended on 2012, under which the Central Disaster Management Council proposed the Basic Disaster management Plan using which Disaster Management Operational Plan was made. Also, Local Disaster management Plan was adopted at the municipal levels.

Even after the implementation of the legal policies, several incidents of violence have occurred in France since 2016.  These attacks have resulted in approximately: 484 injuries and 107 deaths. On January 1^st, 2016, 2 people were injured by vehicle ramming, when a car was rammed twice on four soldiers, protecting a mosque in Valence, by a man. On January 7^th, a jihadist attacked a Paris police station wearing fake explosives. On 13^th June, 2 people were killed (a police officer and his wife) by a jihadist. On 14^th July, a Tunisian resident in France drove a 19 ton truck into a crowd killing 86 people and injuring 434 others. On 19^th July, 4 people were injured by stabbing in a holiday resort by an islamist. On 26^th July, two terrorists attacked a church in Normandy, killing an 85 year old priest. On August 19^th, a rabbi was stabbed, wounding him. On august 30^th, a policeman was also wounded by an islamist.  On September 2016, a nurse and a policewoman were injured by stabbing. On September 4^th, two prison officers were wounded by an inmate and 2 more were injured by another Islamist extremist. On September 8^th, a police officer was attacked and wounded in Essonne. On March 16^th, 2017 one person was injured by a letter bomb in the French office of IMF. On 20^th April, an Islamist attacked police officers killing 3. On August 9^th, 8 were injured when a man rammed his vehicle onto soldiers. On October 1^st, an ISIS member killed 2 at Marsailles Saint Charles Station. On 23^rd March, 2018, a gunman with ISIS affiliation killed 4 people and injured 15 others in a shootout. On 12^th May, 2018, 1 pedestrian was killed and 4 injured in a knife attack. This shows that the policies and legislatives were unable to completely prevent these incidents.

Safety and security issues in the tourism industry

Seven years after the disaster earthquake in Japan, the nation still struggles to recover from the effects and losses. Since the implementation of the legislatures by the Japanese government, the hospitality and hotel industries in Japan have followed the guidelines, and incorporated safety into its business planning. However, disaster of a magnitude brought upon by an earthquake that large can hardly be prepared for.  Statistically, there has been no other major disaster hitting Japan since the Tohoku 2011 earthquake. With the lack of any such events it is hard to ascertain the efficacy of the legislatures in the improvement of the security of the guests in hospitality business, however the implementation of the recommended guidelines shows that the legal frameworks were successfully followed in Japan (Delaney 2015).

An online security survey conducted by HOTEL Asia Pacific Magazine and hospitality technology consultancy Pertlink after the terrorist attacks in Bali shows one in three hoteliers fear the safety of their properties. According to the editor of Hotel Asia Pacific, Steve Shellum, there is a lack of commitment by hoteliers towards ensuring the safety of guests, staff and property. However on the brighter side those investments in hotel security seignificantly increased in many hotels since the Bali attack, which can be useful to improve the security in hotels. The survey shows that most hoteliers feel that the security have improved in the hotel, however, there still is scope for further improvement, as 35.90% of the respondents in the survey still shows concerns over security. This also implies that the hoteliers should take more active and committed approach to ensure the safety, and the staff should also support such actions to ensure their success (Zahra 2015; Berezan et al. 2015). The survey also shows that 61.54% of hoteliers never increased the security budgets, while 15.38% plans to increase the budget. This shows that a significant 76.32% of hotels are yet to increase the security budget. Investments have been made in hiring extra security guards (17.95%), increasing staff training (51.28%) and extra security equipment (30.77). Here it can be suggested that more investment can be made to hire extra security personnel to ensure better security.

Seraphin (2017) has the rime purpose of determining the importance of dark tourism around the recent terrorist attack suffering places and for this purpose included topics such as dark tourism and terrorism related critical papers in the literature review sections. However, in the research it was found that people were not interested in spots having recent terrorist attacks and hence rejected the concept of dark tourism.  Hence, in the Paris attack, the tourism business of France has been affected drastically as terrorism has overpowered the mindset of tourists more than the tourist destinations.

Policies and legislatures implemented for safety in the hospitality industry

Kubo et al., (2015) undertakes an case study on the city of Hitachi so that the primary relationship between community support and the behavior of its residents after the major earthquake of Tohoku pacific region can be understood. For this purpose the authors analyzed the Japanese natural disaster related prevention regimes, conducted a field survey so that the city’s natural disaster related prevention procedure can be analyzed. It was seen that during and after the earthquake the characteristics of their local communities affected residents behavior during and after the earthquake.

The article examines the safety and security of travel and tourism within the travellers and employees. Safety and security issues have been operated as an essential condition of tourism. The authors argues that safety and security issues in tourism start from the beginning of the 1950s and in the last two decades in tourism, there are a lot of issues gained much bigger such as terrorist act, local wars and natural disasters. Also, he’s trying to not only give a theoretical insight the security problems but how to responses and possible action in the crisis situation due to the security problems in the tourism destination. After the tragedy 9/11, security has supported a significant change in order to protect the employees and guests also their belongings as well as the achievements of the industry.

The prime purpose of the paper by Kefan and Jia (2014) was to understand and draw a parallel between current emergencies imposed on world tourism due to several factors primarily the terrorism. Lack of holistic coordination was determined as primary aspect for such situation. This paper utilized the regional tourism emergency response model on the basis of holistic assessment approach and Bayesian network technology for this purpose and found that due to several state responsibilities such as synergic response, responsibility and social values as primary reason for such emergency situation and for explanation, the author utilized the example of Taiwan situation of 2010.

Conclusion

These studies show that government policies are important to improve preparedness for different disasters and prevent them. Effective policies can not only ensure overall safety for the citizens but also ensure framework that can be followed on the event a disaster occurs. Such guidelines should be followed by the hospitality industry to ensure safety and security of the clients and guests. Furthermore, there is a need for active initiative on the part of the various organizations associated with the hospitality industry to actively develop various policies as well as safety regulations which are likely to ensure the safety of the tourists who take the help of the services provided by these organizations. However, results show that only 50% of the hoteliers are investing adequate amount of resources in terms of both capital as well as manpower to ensure the safety of the tourists. Thus, it would be apt to say that there is a need for change in the hospitality regarding the safety measures adopted by them.

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