Review of Florida State Parks Emergency Action Component Plans Using the TCMI Tourism Crisis Management Model

Purpose
This analysis of Florida Park Service (FPS) Emergency Action Component (EAC) plans evaluated the comprehensive readiness of the FPS system as it relates to handling visitors/tourists’ needs during crises.

Method
Florida has 161 state parks with written protection plans which have EAC sections. These EAC sections are the “crisis plans” for each specific park. Only one new park (Weeki Wachee) did not have a complete EAC section and is currently in the process of developing their plan and therefore, was not included in this study. Including the state office, the five district offices and the 160 state parks (161 minus Weeki Wachee), there are 166 state park EAC plans. State park EAC plans were downloaded from the FPS’s DEP Intranet system. Out of 166 FSP EAC plans, 164 plans were downloaded from the DEP intranet and two state parks submitted their EAC plans via email, a response rate of 100%.

The Tourism Crisis Management Institute (TCMI) at the University of Florida analyzed the state park EAC plans using a significantly modified tourism crisis management checklist developed by the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA, 2003). The checklist includes four phases of crisis management: reduction, readiness, response and recovery. There are 67 separate criteria under the four stages of crisis management planning. Content analysis was used to analyze 166 state park EAC plans based on the four phases of crisis management.

Findings
The reduction phase consisted of crisis awareness, political awareness and standard operating procedures. Eighteen percent of EAC plans addressed crisis awareness specific to conducting a basic SWOT analysis. In contrast, none of the EAC plans addressed political awareness, generally defined as working with state and local governments and the general public to raise awareness about the value of state parks and risks involved in long term closures. Similarly, only 10% of the state park EAC plans included standard operating procedures such as detailed written policies dealing with visitor evacuation and/or decisions to close parks.

The readiness phase consisted of having a crisis management plan and visitor planning. Twelve percent of the EAC plans addressed crisis management plan issues and less than one percent addressed visitor planning. Only four EAC plans addressed one visitor planning criteria by having a media liaison and outline.

The response phase included emergency response procedures, visitor assistance and communication. Of these three subsets, communications was the only issue addressed by any of the state parks. One percent of the EAC plans met the communications criteria. The same four EAC plans that met the specific visitor planning criteria also met the communications criteria by having a media spokesperson.

The recovery phase included three subsets: Business continuity plan, human resources or employee management after a crisis, and debriefings to insure lessons learned are incorporated into future planning. The business continuity plan and human resources criteria were met in less than one percent of the EAC plans. One state park EAC plan satisfied the business continuity plan criteria by implementing a media plan and procedures. For human resources, two EAC plans satisfied the criteria by ensuring that staff knew their job responsibilities and one EAC plan included information about counseling support. None of the EAC plans addressed debriefings.

Of the 67 separate criteria following the four phases of crisis planning; only ten items were comprehensively addressed by the FPS collectively.

Conclusion
To maximize visitor/tourist safety during crises in Florida, the TCMI recommends that the Florida Park Service adopt the TCMI Tourism Crisis Management Model when preparing state park EAC plans. The TCMI Model is a comprehensive tourism crisis management planning tool designed to address crisis awareness, political awareness, standard operating procedures, crisis planning, visitor planning, crisis response procedures, visitor assistance, communication, business continuity plans, human resource issues and debriefings. All of these criteria are essential to developing a comprehensive tourism crisis management plan for the FPS.