Apocalypse Now or Overreaction to Coronavirus: The Global Cruise Tourism Industry Crisis

Aleksandar Radic, Rob Law, Michael Lück, Haesang Kang, Antonio Ariza-Montes, Juan M. Arjona-Fuentes and Heesup Han
Additional contact information
Aleksandar Radic: Independent Researcher, Gornji kono 8, 20000 Dubrovnik, Croatia
Rob Law: School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
Michael Lück: School of Hospitality & Tourism, Auckland University of Technology, Auckland 1010, New Zealand
Haesang Kang: Division of Tourism, Dongseo University, 55 Centum Jungang-ro, Haeundae-gu, Busan 48058, Korea
Antonio Ariza-Montes: Department of Quantitative Methods, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, C/Escritor Castilla Aguayo, 4, 14004 Córdoba, Spain
Juan M. Arjona-Fuentes: Department of Quantitative Methods, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, C/Escritor Castilla Aguayo, 4, 14004 Córdoba, Spain
Heesup Han: College of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Sejong University, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 05006, Korea

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: The current COVID-19 cruise tourism crisis has evolved to epic proportions and placed some of the cruise lines on the verge of bankruptcy. This research aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the crisis. Using an inductive qualitative approach, interviews were conducted with eight frequent cruisers who were at home and eight cruise ship employees who were employed by various cruise companies and who were working on cruise ships during the COVID-19 cruise tourism crisis. The findings revealed a systematic failure within the cruise industry management to understand the COVID-19 pandemic. Results of this study highlight the importance of health-related perceived risks on the nature and impact of the COVID-19 cruise tourism crisis. This study supports the overall theory of cruise tourism and crisis management by extending the chaos theory and its principals on the COVID-19 cruise tourism crisis. The managerial implications for cruise lines are outlined.

Keywords: cruise tourism crisis; coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); crisis management; qualitative methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/6968/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/6968/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:17:p:6968-:d:404648

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().