Risk and Safety Challenges for Religious Tourism and Events

Maximiliano Korstanje, Razaq Raj, Kevin Griffin

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781786392305
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Travellers today face many challenges from risk and safety issues. Focusing in particular on risk and safety issues faced by visitors to holy sites, this book looks at the unique challenges raised, where annual religious festivals are commemorated with mass gatherings lasting for days and large crowds require detailed disaster management plans. Beginning with a general section on risk management, covering areas such as disaster management, terrorism, crime and security, the book then delves deeper into specific issues and challenges. It reviews important topics such as understanding the behaviour of crowds, how to perform a risk assessment for a sacred space, and travelling in what some would regard as an increasingly hostile world. Examining critically all risk and safety challenges in this area of management, the book: - Includes a full section of global case studies, as well as discussion questions for each chapter, encouraging readers to translate theory into good practice.- Offers critical thinking on risk, vulnerability and long-term development for mass gatherings.- Covers the importance of disaster management practices and offers practical advice for ensuring attendees' safety.Mitigating risk at mass gathering events and festivals is an area that still needs further research, but this book brings together current thought and provides a valuable reference for those studying religion, tourism and events, as well as event organizers, emergency and hospital services, and local authorities.

1 Risk and Safety Challenges Facing Religious Tourism – An Introduction

Razaq Raj^1,*, Kevin Griffin² and Maximiliano E. Korstanje³

¹Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK, ²Dublin Institute of Technology, Dublin; ³University of Palermo, Buenos Aires

^*Address for correspondence: [email protected]

This book is about an increasing awareness of the risks and safety challenges facing religious events/festivals on a global scale. The turn of the century has brought disturbing news ranging from natural disasters to lethal viruses, and the rise of radical terrorist cells that target main tourist destinations worldwide (Floyd et al., 2004; Ritchie, 2004; Gössling and Hall, 2006; Korstanje and Olsen, 2011; Laws and Prideaux, 2005; Chowdhury et al., 2017). While policy makers devote their endeavours to laying the foundations for safer destinations, new risks, unimagined, have emerged (Tarlow, 2014; Raj and Griffin, 2015) resulting in the media suggesting that the world has become a more dangerous place than ever before.

Contrary world-views exist, with unresolved discrepancies between, for example, culturalists, who define risks as social constructs that depend upon culture and time (Douglas and Wildavsky, 2015; Slovic, 1993, 2016), and probabilists, who have fleshed out all-encompassing models to predict future risk emergences (Kaplan and Garrick, 1981; Kuran and Sunstein, 1999; Sunstein, 2005). In parallel, academics not only struggle to impose their own definitions of risk, but also disagree regarding the best courses of action to take to achieve more efficient risk-mitigation programmes (Faulkner, 2001). The editors of this volume think that this is the main reason why a risk management theory that combines the profundity of academic discussion with practical programmes is necessary. Although risk studies and risk perception theory have more than 40 years of tradition within the fields of psychology and sociology, before 11 September 2001 there were few tourism analysts or scholars turning their attention to the processes of risk, safety or securitization (Korstanje, 2009).

Over recent decades, tourism-related research has matured, making considerable advances in expanding the current understanding of risk as well as its intersection with leisure activities (Mansfeld, 2006; Saha and Yap, 2014). Because of limited time and space, it is very difficult to unfold a wider debate that would include the vast range of theories and studies revolving around risk perception, but they can be framed in three well-known families of study:

Risk associated with individual or collective demographic assets

Studies and research findings included in this family centre around the study of risk and risk perception according to the demographic assets of tourists. The chief goal of these works is discovering a direct correlation between demographics and risk perception. Variables such as age, political affiliation, religion, genre, purchasing power or ethnicity correlate directly with risk perception. Quantitative research is found in these works (Lepp and Gibson, 2003; Floyd et al., 2004; Fuchs and Reichel, 2004).

Risk associated with personality traits

There is an alternative wave of theories that focus on cognitive-behavioural patterns or personalities of subjects in order to predict stable patterns of reaction against risk. Almost all studies in this family emphasize levels of anxiety and uncertainty-tolerance as key factors that explain risk perception. Those with higher tolerance to uncertainty perceive fewer risks than others. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used in these studies (Plog, 2001; Kozak et al., 2007; Quintal et al., 2010).

Risk as a disciplinary mechanism of control

Based on a critical (Marxist) perspective, these studies identify risk as a discourse that is created and imposed by the global financial elite in order to undermine the workforce’s resistance. Through the articulation of a discourse of fear, academics within this family argue that fear and risk should be studied as political institutions that are oriented towards discipline of the lower classes. In these approaches, historiographies and qualitative methods are often preferred (Bianchi, 2006; Korstanje and Tarlow, 2012; Raj et al., 2013; Bianchi and Stephenson, 2014; Tzanelli, 2016).

With their strengths and weaknesses, each family not only pays heed to particular aspects of risk but also develops different explanations that need further attention, helping policy makers to strengthen their protocols of safety and security. Further, though risk perception theory has reached its zenith in recent years, security as a topic of investigation in tourism, hospitality, leisure and event management has only advanced at a snail’s pace (Skoll and Korstanje, 2014).

The present book, which is intended to fill the gap, explores key learning points from a range of contemporary case studies of religious and pilgrimage activity related to ancient, sacred and emerging tourist destinations, and new forms of pilgrimage, faith systems and quasi-religious activities. Hence, travellers in general are facing many challenges in the form of terrorism and risk, and this book focuses, in particular, on the risk and safety challenges being faced by faith-based travellers.

Human stampedes during religious festivals are identified as a major hazard that occurs during mass-gathering events in Saudi Arabia, India, Bangladesh and other part of the world. Annual religious festivals and events are commemorated with mass gatherings that can last hours or days; the annual Hajj festival in Saudi Arabia and Hindu festivals in India are examples. Mass-gathering events and festivals require a particular type and level of disaster management plan on the part of stakeholders. Management to mitigate crowd disasters at mass-gathering events and festivals has not been fully researched, and this volume will critically examine some of the key issues, aiming to provide suggestions for future event organizers, emergency and hospital services, and local authorities/governments.

This book aims to bridge the ever-widening gap between specialists within religious, tourism, management, education, risk assessment, and health and safety areas on the one hand, and event organizers on the other. The authors provide practical applications, models and illustrations of religious tourism and pilgrimage management from a variety of international perspectives. They introduce theories and models in an accessible way and include many case studies.

The book is a timely reassessment of the connection between risk and safety issues for religious tourism and pilgrimage, as well as those for secular spaces and events. The principle behind the volume is to demonstrate the intrinsic elements and events that have a crucial role to play within the pilgrimage management process and explore key learning points from a range of contemporary case studies of religious and pilgrimage activity related to ancient, sacred and emerging tourist destinations; and new forms of pilgrimage, faith systems and quasi-religious activities. Risk, vulnerability and long-term planning are important aspects in any planning/development process for large-scale gatherings, and disaster management is now a vital element in the planning of global and large-scale events.

Risk management is an essential requirement for sacred sites, places of worship and religious events in a climate where it has become essential for businesses to address the safety and security of their activities. In the current climate, it is important to protect pilgrims from any harm and ensure visitors can use a product/service with minimum risk. Risk assessment concerns the long-term ability of the organization to carry out its daily business and remain competitive.

The issue of risk assessment has been recognized by authorities who have been making changes in the religious tourism sector during the last decade – in particular, event organizers and managers are dealing with challenges such as hate crime, human stampedes, international terrorism, food safety, health issues and natural disasters.

Risk and safety have become more important issues for the tourism industry due to political situations around the world. This has changed the notion of safety for visitors to religious sites also, due to a number of disasters that have struck the religious tourism industry, including international terrorism and human stampede. Therefore, issues in relation to health, safety and risk have become prominent. This is especially the case where the religious tourist plays an important role in the economy of a country, such as in Egypt, Italy, India, Israel, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, all of which contain major sacred sites. These countries perform well in terms of religious tourism, most of them being fully aware of the significance played by religious tourism as a key vehicle for development.

It is evident that multidisciplinary approaches need to be adopted to deal with the growing risks to safety and security facing the religious tourism industry, which must meet international standards outlined in health and safety protocols adopted by the events and festivals industry. Therefore, it is paramount that organizers address the concerns of worshippers/travellers by adopting risk assessment methods that are proofed by international health and safety acts. For example, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, introduced in the UK, states that if a company has five or more employees, a health and safety policy must be in operation, with a clear health and safety certificate displayed for all employees. Therefore, employers need to develop a health and safety policy and undertake a full risk assessment of the working environment for all employees, volunteers and visitors. This is vital to ensure that key risk and safety hazards are assessed and controlled, and to minimize the potential for injury to staff. Religious events vary in size, nature and type, but irrespective of scale, religious events need to ensure that risk and safety assessments are undertaken in the same manner.

In years to come, tourism scholars should cooperate in the creation of an all-encompassing model to understand risks and mitigate disasters, and this is deeply ingrained in contemporary society. Once potential risks have been assessed, the next step should be to improve the climate of trust, which is vital for the functioning of tourism in general, and religious tourism and pilgrimage in particular.

Overview of the Chapters

In Chapter 2 Alan Clarke reflects on religion, ideology and terrorism, highlighting that now, in the late 2010s, we live at a particular conjuncture that brings together terrorism and tourism and places them in a context where religion is a defining parameter. Clarke deals with many concepts in relation to ideologies, panic and risk. In his conclusion he highlights that the dominant, simple and uncomplicated narrative expounded by the media focuses on the terrorist and acts of terrorism, negatively linking them to religion, and ignores the many positive acts undertaken in the name of religion and faith. Because there is an absence of a humanistic perspective, the dominant viewpoint is one that focuses on an all-pervasive perception of danger.

In Chapter 3 Razaq Raj and Kevin Griffin demonstrate the principles of risk assessment, how health and safety management works in practice, and the significant risks involved in managing religious events. Religious events are becoming increasingly popular with people from many religious congregations undertaking pilgrimages. These pilgrimages are mostly made up of people (devotees) who are committed to their faith. The chapter presents, in the first instance, the principles of risk assessment and outlines a number of statutory legislations that apply in different countries. The authors argue that it is vital to understand, manage and control crowd movements, and there is a necessity to provide facilities that meet the requirements of participants. There is also a high risk of accidents occurring during the construction and development stages of religious sites. They further discuss the importance of contingency planning and of developing an emergency plan in relation to large-scale religious festivals. The security for such festivals needs to be reinforced and meet international standards. Therefore, festival and event organizers must put measures in place to mitigate any safety and security dangers they face, and need to ensure that such contingency plans are in place for the duration of the event. The most important tool that religious festival organizers need to employ is a risk assessment plan. Risk...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• PART I RISK MANAGEMENT
• PART II MANAGING FOR RISK – ISSUES AND CHALLENGES
• PART III RISK CHALLENGES AND ISSUES – GLOBAL CASE STUDIES
• Index
• Back Cover