Organizational learning in tourism and hospitality crisis management

We live in an uncertain world characterized by the occurrence of unexpected incidents in different corners of the globe which can have widespread adverse consequences. It is therefore vital to be prepared for, and attempt to prevent or mitigate the negative effects of such crises through crisis management tools and organizational learning practices. According to the current literature, the tourism and hospitality industry has been exposed to dramatic impacts from human-induced crises and natural disasters during past decades. The repercussions are manifested in the form of business failure, economic losses, tarnished destination image, physical damage to infrastructure and facilities, psychological effects, and other undesirable outcomes. Many of these crisis events are recurrent and their effects can be averted or ameliorated through practicing organizational learning and engaging in preparation activities. However, limited attempts have been made by industry players to detect early warning signals, learn from crises and prepare for the next ones. Despite the important contributions in terms of 'lessons learned' from historical analyses, they usually provide little information on how tourism organizations facing the crisis attempted to manage it proactively and what they did reactively (Paraskevas and Quek, 2019).

Comprehensive sources in this field is thus necessary to fill this gap. Few research studies are available to discuss organizational learning in the process of tourism crisis management. A comprehensive collection of book chapters concentrating on both theory and practice will shed some light on this issue and propose recommendations for future investigation. Hence, the aim of this publication is to discover various aspects of organizational learning in tourism and hospitality crisis management and discuss future prospects. The book will be the main resource for future research in the field of tourism crisis management and organizational learning.

There would be several reasons for such demand. First, this subject is relatively new in the hospitality and tourism field, covering many critical aspects of organizational learning in tourism crisis management. This novelty and in-depth discussions of practical lessons across the globe could be of great interest to both academics and practitioners alike. In recent years, many tourism and hospitality firms have applied the essence of crisis management and organizational learning in their contingency planning and crisis management frameworks. Tourism and hospitality managers have fully realized the importance of learning from previous crises and thus applied these learning strategies in their preparation programs. Therefore, they would be very eager more than before to use this material and recommend it to colleagues, employees, etc.

Another potential demand would be academics, students and researchers in the both fields of organizational learning and tourism crisis management. Most universities and tourism institutions either directly or indirectly have developed new curriculums on tourism crisis management at Masters and PhD levels with special focus on organizational learning and preparation. This book will be of great interest for these people as previous resources are relatively outdated and furthermore, they did not cover the subject of organizational learning in details.

Zahed Ghaderi, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran; Alexandros Paraskevas, University of West London, UK