|
As the year 2011 comes to its
conclusion, the tourism industry faces some of its most important
challenges. The past year has seen the economy on a rollercoaster
with the stock market rising and falling at a breathtaking rate.
Tourism security issues plague much of the world, while earthquakes
were felt in such unlikely places as Oklahoma and Washington, DC.
Political turmoil was felt from Norway to Wall Street, with protests
from California to Wisconsin.
Political turmoil is however not the
only challenge facing the tourism industry. During the past year
food prices rose at alarming rates impacting people's pocket books
and some of tourism most important components, the restaurant and
convention industry.
The economic doldrums in which much of
the world finds itself today touches all sections of the tourism
industry. Restaurants have had to raise prices or lower their
service. The airline industry is especially vulnerable to changes in
the price of fuel that in turn impacts the way that tourism attracts
or loses the long distance traveler. These factors may create an
economic tsunami as the leisure travelers decide that travel is
simply too expensive and thus the stay-at-home-vacation once again
becomes a reality impacting hotels and attractions and of course the
hotel motel tax. The international tourism industry also faces the
reality that world currencies are no longer stable. It is impossible
to predict the value of the US dollar or euro over the next twelve
months. It is even harder to predict if the euro will survive and
what will happen to the European market. This inability to know the
value of a currency means that long-range tourism prices are
especially hard to predict and the fallout from this monetary
instability is already impacting multiple tourism support systems.
For example, tourism experts are now noting that hospitals are
turning people away (despite their nation's laws) who do not have
local insurance or a well-backed credit card.
The tourism industry can no longer
ignore the issue of tourism security. Tourism professionals need to
understand the interaction and overlapping of tourism economics with
local factors and combine these with tourism safety and security.
Tourism professionals need to know what are the right questions to
ask and to whom. In an interconnected hypersensitive media world no
tourism industry can afford crises such as: medical or food crisis,
natural or political disasters, conventional wars or acts of
terrorism, or repots of crime, gang violence, or narco-trafficking.
Each of these threats is interconnected and in a world connected by
both the internet and twenty-four hour media nothing stays in any
one place for long. Instead, what impacts one part of the tourism
industry in the end will impact the entire industry.
Furthermore, from a tourism security
perspective, the world's security situation has deteriorated. There
are few nations today that are not suffering from either political
or economically motivated violence. From Mexico's drug wars to most
of Latin America's express kidnappings, from street violence from
England to the Middle East, the tourism world must face the fact
that there is an increase both in the potential for crime and for
acts of terrorism. Indeed the current Libyan government, with a
great deal of blood on its hands, is not above "punishing" the West
by further acts of terrorism.
In such a topsy-turvy world, tourism
officials need to know how to predict future trends, how to assess
risk and manage future crisis. Dr. Peter Tarlow is a world renounced
speaker and author who helps the tourism leaders deal with the fast
changing world in which the world's largest industry finds itself.
Tarlow aids tourism professionals to be creative in times of crisis
and innovative in times in the most difficult of times. Tarlow,
though humor and over a quarter of century in both academic and
applied tourism, aids tourism professionals to be creative and well
aware of the multiple disciplinary character of their profession.
Tarlow emphasizes that tourism
professionals need to be much more than simply marketers. Today's
tourism professionals must take into account a wide range of
disciplines that include knowledge of: economic factors, political
factors, the price of commodities, the impact of security on their
industry, and how frontline customer service interacts with
demographic changes, and how weather patterns may impact their
industry. Tarlow's interdisciplinary approach, which can be
delivered in both English and Spanish, provides tourism
professionals with the tools that they need to face challenging
times and to turn economic turmoil into economic success.
Dr.
Peter Tarlow, Ph.D, is a world-renowned speaker and expert
specializing in such areas as: the impact of crime and terrorism on
the tourism industry, event and tourism risk management, and
economic development.
Copyright © 2012 Gold Stars Speakers
Bureau. All Rights Reserved.
To learn more of how Peter Tarlow can
help your organization,
click
here.
|
