Destination transitions and resilience following trigger events and transformative moments

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 Kaik & omacr;ura 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 Kaik & omacr;ura 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.