JAKARTA: Resilience against disasters through crisis management is vital for East Nusa Tenggara as the reputation of its tourism villages grows.
For this, the Tourism and Creative Economy ministry urged the tourist villages of Flores, Alor, Lembata, and Bima, collectively known as the Floratama area, to take heed of the advice, according to Antara news.
The call was made by the ministry's crisis management coordinator and deputy for destination development, Danesta F. Nugroho, on Thursday.
"Crisis management is a systemic approach that aims to build the capacity of the tourism ecosystem in preparing, responding, and recovering from a crisis," Danesta said.
Any crisis attributed to natural and non-natural factors would have a negative impact on the performance of the creative tourism ecosystem, he said.
It could cause a decrease in tourist visits, a decline in income from the creative economy sector, and a fall in hotel room occupancy rates, besides affecting tourism sector workers, he added.
Danesta said it was crucial for the Floratama area to put in place a four-pronged crisis management plan to be executed in phases. These are the preparedness, the emergency response, the recovery, and the normalisation phases.
Based on the disaster profile of Floratama area, the ministry has listed East Manggarai district as the area with the largest multi-disaster risk.
He said the ministry has taken several steps to mitigate disasters, including encouraging the use of village funds.
Village funds are expected to be prioritized for the mitigation and handling of natural disasters, including for mapping potential disaster-prone areas in villages, building evacuation routes, providing evacuation route pointers, conducting natural disaster emergency response activities, providing refugee places, as well as carrying out environmental rehabilitation and reconstruction.