Chapter 5: Sustainability of Tourism after the SARS Pandemic: Revisiting the Past Experiences

Purpose: This paper aims to review the effect of the 2003 SARS epidemic on tourism and to analyze the learning outcomes from this crisis critically. The study further proposes practical and strategic tips for airlines, hoteliers and destination marketers in the top Asian tourism market such as India, China, Singapore and Thailand if a similar crisis affects the region.

Study Design/Methodology/Approach: The study followed the qualitative approach for deriving the findings. The research reviewed past literature by using the Prisma method, which is an evidence-based minimum set of items, for reporting in systematic reviews and meta-analyses. The research summarized the previous literature on the SARS outbreak in 2003 and reviewed various practices for tourism industry sustainability.

Finding: The study provides the information of how the airlines, hoteliers and destination marketers tackled the SARS epidemic and proposes the integrated strategy for managing such crisis in future.

Originality/Value: This paper performed the systematic literature review of all the relevant researches related to the 2003 SARS outbreak and its effect on the tourism industry.

Implications: This paper suggests the strategies and practices based on past reviews and learnings from experiences which may be useful for the tourism stakeholders to tackle and minimize the effect of such crisis in future.