Prof. Eli Avraham

Expert in Crisis CommunicationUniversity of Haifa

Bio

Professor Eli Avraham teaches in the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa in Israel. Prof. Avraham is the author/co-author of a number of books including “Media Strategies for Marketing Places in Crisis and Improving the Image of Cities, Countries and Tourist Destinations” (Elsevier, 2008) and “Marketing Tourism for Developing Countries: Battling stereotypes and crises in Asia, Africa and the Middle East” (2016, Palgrave-McMillian). His research interests include public relations and marketing strategies, marketing places, nation branding, advertising, image repair, and crisis communication.

Lecture title

Crisis Communication and Destination Image Repair Strategies

Abstract

Over the past two decades, tourism crises have become a familiar problem for a growing list of countries, regions and cities. Strong tourism brands and popular tourist destinations such as Paris, New York, London, Cairo and Madrid have suffered from terror attacks, demonstrations and riots. In the age of the World Wide Web, new media, global TV networks and the global economy, tourism crises are widely covered in the international media and mentioned in the new media.  They can empty out hotels, cancel flights and leave tourist attractions deserted overnight. The goal of the presentation is to show the relations between crisis management and crisis communication management, and to demonstrate how marketers all over the world use recovering marketing and image repair strategies in order to promote their destinations’ perception as “safe” for visit, during and after crises.