ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Tour.
Sec. Disaster/Crisis Management and Resilience in Tourism
Research Topic: Crisis management in the tourism industry in Africa; The case of the tourism subsectors in The Gambia during the COVID-19 pandemic
Provisionally accepted
- Halmstad University, Halmstad, Sweden
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The aim of this study is to expand the analysis of crisis management approaches in the context of the tourism industry in Africa by exploring strategies applied by the tourism subsectors to manage a crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic, using The Gambia as a case study. Through purposive sampling of 65 professionals, 45 responded, including tourism officers from public sector, the hotel managers, tourist lodging managers, ecotourism facility managers, tourist ground handling managers, restaurant managers, entertainment sector managers, tourist taxi owners, and tourist markets vendors, all of whom hold managerial positions and possess professional experience and knowledge of the country's tourism business environment participated in the research. A mixed-method approach was adopted, and content analysis utilized as a data synthesis technique. The findings indicates that, apart from survival strategies employed by various tourism subsectors in The Gambia, managers also relied on the local resources, tourist suppliers abroad regarding travel requirements and restrictions, and directives from government to maintain their operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on this knowledge, the findings shows that practitioners and policy makers should rely on available local resources, aligned with international standards creating a foundation for tourism operations to become resilient and survived situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic as a strategy for crisis management
Keywords: Tourism crisis management, Crisis life cycle, Destination capitals, the Gambia, the COVID-19 pandemic, resilient
Received: 18 Sep 2025; Accepted: 20 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Drammeh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Foday Yaya Drammeh, dramkangi@hotmail.se
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