Enabling Environment for Diaspora’s Participation in Homeland Tourism Crisis Recovery

Keywords: Tourism, Indonesia, diaspora, Crisis, Disaster, COVID-19
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Saturday
Session Start / End Time: 2/26/2022 09:40 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/26/2022 11:00 AM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 29

Abstract

There has been growing interest in exploring diaspora engagement during major crises such as disasters; however, the literature is lacking. There is a paucity of studies within the tourism literature on diaspora and crisis. This paper seeks to fill this void by examining how homeland destinations can leverage the social capital of their diaspora for destination crisis recovery and resilience building. Grounded in the transnationalism framework, this study explores the role of homeland National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) in creating a supportive environment to increase diaspora engagement in tourism crisis recovery. The study utilized Indonesian diaspora engagement and COVID-19 as a case study. Data were gathered through a series of virtual focus groups with Indonesian diasporas in North America and interviews with the government agencies in 2020-2021. The findings of this study highlight the role of NTOs as tourism crisis brokers by creating enabling environments to boost diaspora participation during tourism crisis recovery. In this capacity, NTOs can serve four functions: facilitating, resourcing, partnering, and endorsing diaspora engagement. For example, NTOs connect affected destinations with the skilled diaspora and engage the diaspora in tourism recovery. With the increasing number of global migrations, much work needs to be done in this area of study. Hopefully, the findings of this study will serve as a first step in shedding light on the dynamic relationship of diasporas and tourism crisis recovery.