Book review - Tourism Crises and Destination Recovery

Citation

Webster, C. (2022), "Book review - Tourism Crises and Destination Recovery", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 402-403. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-09-2022-285

This is a text worthy of reviewing, as it deals with a topic that is a major political, economic and practical issue in our current world – the recovery of tourism following crisis. The topic itself is a vast one that many of us can imagine is important in regards to how tourism destinations recover from crises. The book is a comprehensive text illustrating the various forms of crises that may exist. The text illustrates how these different forms of crises may impact upon destinations and how the destination may recover from crisis. While it may not be exclusively future oriented, its content is a good source of background information for those researching issues related to destination recovery in the future.

The book is composed of two parts. The first part is “Establishing the Theoretical and Sectoral Context for Tourism Risk, Crisis and Recovery with focus on Covid-19 Tourism's Most Challenging Crisis,” while the second part is “Key Themes in Tourism Risk, Crisis and Recovery.” Part One is composed of three chapters. These chapters introduce the topic and explain the role of government and industry in crisis and recovery. Part One also highlights how COVID-19 came to rock the global tourism industry. Part Two is composed of nine chapters. These nine chapters develop different themes such as political instability, terrorism, natural disasters, health-related tourism crises, crime, economic crises, technological risk, product and service failures and environmental crises. Each theme's impact upon recovery of destinations is presented within Part Two.

There are some features in the book that add value to the product. The cover is attractive and disturbing, while communicating the concept of the book in a very clear visual way. The cover features an active volcano, a visual that illustrates a clear environmental problem. A reader can clearly imagine the impact of an active volcano upon a tourism destination. Also, within each chapter, there are multiple figures that are welcome, adding a visual element to the book that otherwise could be composed only of prose. An additional feature that makes the book attractive specifically to instructors is that there are “Discussion Questions and Issues” at the end of each chapter. In addition, Chapters 4–12 each include a number of case studies illustrating detail about the issues covered within each chapter, which is another feature attractive to instructors. As a person expects, there is also an index, making it easier to find critical topics in which a person may be interested.

There are some strength to the book. It is well written and in a style that is accessible and easy to understand. In addition, its structure makes a great deal of sense so that it can be used as a fairly comprehensive textbook on the topic of recovery from a crisis. At the same time, for those interested in some types of crisis and recovery, a reader could pick and choose specific chapters for use in courses or as background material on a type of crisis and recovery.

There are no major weaknesses in the book. To be nitpicky, I would rather have one reference section at the end of the book than a short one at the end of each chapter but this is also an advantage. For instance, if one uses single chapters in the book rather than uses the whole book as a holistic reading, the existence of a shorter reference section at the end of a shorter reading may be helpful. Since the book is pragmatic and looks upon the pragmatic aspects of destination recovery rather than more abstract approaches to destination recovery, it is possible that a person may want more theory than the book offers. Most of the references cited in the book are not scholarly, which means that the book itself seems more of text based upon practical research and practice than academic and abstract approaches to destination recovery. However, there are a fair number of academic references used in the book, understandably concentrated in the first chapter.

All in all, I would recommend this book for those who are interested in the topic. The book would be quite useful as a primer for those interested in destination recovery. A person in a management position in the industry would find it useful. It would arguably be a great text for all levels of university students. While there is not much theory in it to be used for snobby academic research, it may be good background information for those who need background on a specific topic and an occasional reference. Those interested in scenario planning may find it an especially interesting read. This text would help those persons make pragmatic plans for future disruptions and/or crises, if they are wise enough to anticipate unpleasant scenarios impacting upon the tourism industry.