Reducing the Australian tourism industry's vulnerability to external shocks: identifying and understanding disaster-resilient tourists (2013)

We propose a way for the tourism industry to protect itself against unpredictable external shocks, such as 9/11 (which led to a drop in tourism arrivals to the USA of 7%), SARS (which reduced Japanese outbound tourism by 55%), and the GFC (which caused a 4% drop in international tourism arrivals). We will identify people who are highly committed to tourism and less likely to cancel travel plans in response to disasters. The theoretical contribution is twofold: (1) a novel segmentation base is proposed that does not assume that everyone wants to be a tourist; and (2) a novel approach to disaster planning is introduced that is based on reducing a destination¿s vulnerability to disasters rather than focusing on (planning of) recovery.