Impact of COVID-19 Epidemic on Tourism Industry and Comparative Analysis of Countries' Crisis Management Strategies

In the project, it is aimed to examine the tourism-oriented crisis management strategies during the COVID-19 outbreak of the 21 countries that host the most tourists in the world (Turkey and the first 20 countries) and the application practices for tourism during the epidemic period. Considering that the marketing-oriented response times of the countries within the scope of the project are forty days on average, it turns out that all countries were caught unprepared for marketing. At the beginning of the prominent changes in the content shared after the epidemic, the theme of events is the theme that decreased the most. On the other hand, it is seen that the sharing of landscape-oriented content has increased. While there are words such as travel, vacation and love, beauty, inspiration and nature, places to see and focused content in the posts of the countries before the epidemic, the content that encourages staying safe and traveling in the future in the post-epidemic posts and the hope-oriented posts that highlight the emotional image dimension of the destination are preferred. is seen. In addition, it is revealed that the crisis management approaches applied by the countries during the epidemic process are gathered under seven headings: fiscal and monetary policy, marketing and communication studies, cooperation approach, recovery strategies, attempts to revive domestic tourism and direct sector supports. Considering the crisis period practices of the countries, a crisis management model that can be applied in epidemics and other types of crisis has been proposed. This model consists of three main parts, pre-crisis, during and post-crisis, and seven parts: readiness, signaling, action and prevention, struggle, recovery-regeneration and learning. By applying the use of big data in the model, especially in the signal section, it will be possible to detect crises in advance by using data that seem independent and unrelated to each other. With the general acceptance that the crisis also creates opportunities, efforts should be made to resolve structural problems that cannot be changed in normal periods, to update quantity-oriented tourism strategies and financing models, and to ensure that general support and acceptance for sustainable tourism activities are applicable at the end of this period.