HEIF PROJECT

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Project Title: Hazard awareness and vulnerability of tourism destinations in the Maltese Islands.

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Funding: UK Higher Education Innovation Fund.

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Other researchers: Dr Victoria Kennedy (project lead; profile here), Dr Kevin Crawford (profile here), Revd. Professor David Chester (profile here), Associate Professor Janet Speake (profile here), Professor John A. Schembri (profile here) and Dr Ritienne Gauci (profile here).

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Background:

Despite recent scholarly focus on the role of various stakeholders in disaster risk reduction and disaster management in the tourism industry, work exploring such dynamics in a popular island destination not at the forefront of being considered a hazardous/risky environment is scarce. The Republic of Malta is an example of such an island and is the study location in this project. Questions to address in this project include: how aware are local tourism stakeholders of natural hazards affecting their destination; are any management plans in place, and how could this affect the future sustainability of the industry in Malta?

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Recent research (see Publications, 2018) has identified that approaches to disaster risk reduction are not universal in Malta, but rather are dependent on the hazard category. This is a concern, as fragmentation between stakeholders concerned with different or similar hazard categories may not encourage joined-up thinking and collaboration in readiness and response frameworks. This extends to notions of sustainability and sustainable tourism dimensions in Malta.

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In the first stage of this project, we examined how natural hazards guide and influence actions, decision- as well as policy-making in Malta amongst key national-level public sector agencies and NGOs, with a specific focus on the vulnerability of tourism destinations. This first stage involved a one-day conference in 2018 utilising a variety of qualitative data collection techniques (see News); a forthcoming paper in Tourism Recreation Research discusses this stage of the project. Currently, we are examining and detailing the impact of this work on tourism, hazard and disaster risk reduction actions and policies in Malta. This work is ongoing with colleagues in the Department of Geography at the University of Malta.