Communication for destinations’ image in crises and disasters: a review and future research agenda

Abstract

Abstract Purpose: This study provides an overview, the state-of-the-art ‘research fronts’, the emerging themes of investigation and a research agenda of crisis communication for destinations’ image. Methodology: The research is conducted with a bibliographic coupling study, complemented with an H-Classic classification and a thematic analysis of the articles included in the four clusters provided by the bibliometric methodology (papers dating from 2017 to 2021, both years included). Findings: Based on the bibliometric analysis, four thematic clusters were identified. Two of these clusters supply the ‘research fronts’, the most current themes in a scientific field: Cluster 1 addresses communication related to tourists’ safety, and cluster 2 enhances the role of stakeholders’ collaboration to create destinations resilience in crisis communication. The other two clusters highlight emerging themes for future investigation: Cluster 3 focuses on recovery marketing communication strategies for a post-crisis era and cluster 4 analyses how crisis communication strategies contribute to reduce tourists’ risk perception and boosting travel intention. Finally, a future research agenda is proposed, based on the emerging themes from the study. Originality/value: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric study to analyse crisis communication for destinations’ image (pre-crisis, crisis, and post-crisis). The study, which covers the most recent academic literature in this field, provides insights of communication strategies from recent crises and disasters within the ‘research fronts’. Besides, a research agenda useful for future scholar investigation is proposed with its emerging themes. These rising topics and learnings from past events could be used by destination marketing organisations’ (DMOs) in crisis communication for destination image recovery in the current post-pandemic scenario or in upcoming crises or disasters.