Organizations, Strategic Risk Management and Resilience: The Impact of COVID-19 on Tourism

The aim of this book is to identify, analyse and underline the importance of having a conceptual framework designed to develop and improve the risk management and resilience for organizations, in particular during times of crisis. The study explains how firms can develop a capacity for resilience, why this capacity enables a firm to more fully realize the benefits that changing opportunities present and highlights the important role that strategic risk management plays in both developing and using a firm's capacity for resilience. In the aftermath of COVID-19 is of paramount importance to predict the trajectory of change in consumer behaviour to help managers identify the basis of a resilience strategy to ideally respond to the current situation. Today’s global business environment is dynamic and is subject to continuous changes that create opportunities and threats for any enterprise and that pressure enterprises to find effective ways to survive and develop. The lack of an adequate preparation exposes organizations to environmental threats that may jeopardize the organizational sustainability and individual welfare. The recent COVID-19 health emergency confirmed the unpredictability of some events that may have a significant impact on the life of enterprises. Disasters, crises, and other unexpected events have the potential to damage the management of a company and to interrupt the continuity in the flow of activities with consequences for companies’ profitability. In this context, to survive and to foster future success, organizations need to develop a risk and resilience capacity which enables them to adequately react to unexpected events and to achieve long term sustainability. In light of these premises, the book focuses, in particular, on the analysis and description of the Italian tourism sector, giving a description on how the tourism sector reacted to COVID-19, underlining the importance to adopt a resilient approach relevant for evaluating the effective impact of the pandemic dynamics and to provide support tools for decision-makers in order to be prepared for the unexpected and to be able to follow a smart adaptation. The choice to study the Italian situation is justified by the fact that the Italian population represents an important customer for the tourism sector and an important reference target for tourism sector.