Abstract
Disasters and crises are increasingly seen as opportunities for
transformation of the tourism system at various scales. From a
resilience perspective, crises and disasters may act as trigger events
for system change, sometimes described as the “disaster-reform
hypothesis”. An integrative framework informed by different fields is
used to analyse the destination development pathways following
the Kaikōura earthquake in New Zealand. In addition to policy
documents and media, the study draws on semi-structured
interviews with 21 business owners and managers in the Kaikōura
region, an internationally recognised ecotourism destination. The
findings show pathway competition, experimentation, scale effects
and lock-in influencing transitions. The research identifies
interactions between different actors at different levels of
governance in shaping destination pathways post-disaster, with
external political and economic actors having the most influence.
Multiple levels of resilience chart a potentially more resilient
destination. The study concludes that the range of potential
destination pathways is constrained by decision-making at other
scales, e.g. national policy settings and insurance coverage, that
affect tourism businesses and destination decision-making. As a
result, the notion of transformation should be understood as an
essentially contested concept both within a destination and between
destination stakeholders and those that operate at a national scale.