Tourism and economic crisis management within apec. cases: Phuket (THAILAND) and los cabos (MEXICO)1

Abstract

The Subprime Crisis in 2008 showed the need to devise mechanisms of economic adaptation and prevention of losses in a context of extreme vulnerability, which defi ed traditional views of economic and political organization worldwide. For the tourism sector the challenge doubled since it is normally highly vulnerable to external impacts, which in turn tend to compromise the capacity of recovery of tourist destinations. This paper offers a discussion of responses from the lodging sector to the world economic crisis in two APEC tourism destinations: Phuket (Thailand) and Los Cabos (Mexico), stressing employment policies. Such destinations refl ect a dynamic model of foreign investment and demand, and are locations of processes of economic and demographic growth that foster controversial local and external interactions. The research was carried out utilizing semi-structured in-depth interviews applied face-to-face to high level hotel executives. One of the most important results points out that personnel management is one key feature for crisis resilience and to further competitiveness. © 2014 WIT Press.