The February earthquake in Christchurch and then the March
earthquake and tsunami in Japan have brought home to many of us in
the tourism industry in New Zealand the need to have our businesses
prepared for radical unexpected external change.
In business, we often refer to 'risk management' as the way to
build plans for dealing with business risks. And if we're
honest, many businesses of all sizes don't spend enough time
identifying, assessing and working out scenarios for dealing with
risks. Small businesses have possibly the most to gain from
dedicating time and effort to risk management, as they're less
likely to have a formalised approach.
This is a big subject, and I'm not going to do it justice here,
but there are some things that tourism businesses ought to be
investing time on that will strengthen their capacity to deal with
big external changes. As we've seen recently, it's often too
late once these things happen.
Read the rest of CE Kevin Bowler's blog here.