Disaster Management in Coastal Tourism Destinations: The Case for Transactive Planning and Social Learning

Due to its intrinsic scenery, many tourism destinations are located in areas that are exposed to various natural hazards such as tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and high winds. In particular, coastal tourism presents numerous risks unique to the tourism sector due to differences in the type of vulnerabilities faced by tourists compared to other types of communities. Tourists are transient, may lack knowledge of local hazards, perceive risks differently, and may present various communication barriers. Physical mitigation may also be limited as local communities rely on the preservation of the area’s natural assets. Research on the effects of disasters in tourism destinations have generally fallen into the categories of emergency management, which is focused on the preparedness and response phases, or solutions, adopting a structural engineering approach. Long-term solutions that utilize non-structural approaches have been acknowledged as vital towards mitigation in various literatures, but in reality, have been scarcely applied. As disasters can constitute a wicked rather than tame problem, long-term solutions should include the input of multiple stakeholders striving towards a working solution that is constantly updated through feedback loops. Urban planning can provide such theoretical backgrounds that are missing from tourism planning studies, but have thus far, been limited to the needs of the permanent communities and not the transient community. This paper examines literature on disaster management planning in coastal destinations and bridges the gap between the fields of urban planning, disaster management and tourism planning, by suggesting the utilization of social learning to address disaster management gaps found in existing literature.