Crisis and Africa’s tourism industry : a comprehensive review and agenda for future research

Abstract

Although several studies have investigated crisis and crisis management in tourism, knowledge, and scholarship are limited in this field, especially in third-world nations like those in Africa. This paper presents a comprehensive review and synthesis of crisis management literature in Africa to address the gap in current understanding. The content-based analysis of 77 published articles from 29 journals provides a deeper understanding of Africa's tourism crisis research and scholarship trends. A three-stage integrative framework classifying crisis management literature/approaches was developed: pre-crisis, during-crisis, and post-crisis. This paper examines Africa's current and emerging tourism crisis issues identified in the analysis. It also discusses the implications of existing studies on crisis management research and outlines new research directions and implications concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.