Objective
This study examined the tourism crisis management plans of 50 official State Tourism Organizations (STO) and one official District Tourism Organizations (DTO) to determine the preparedness included in each plan.

Method
Fifty-one STOs were asked to provide their tourism crisis management plans to the University of Florida's Tourism Crisis Management Institute via email or mail. Thirty eight of the 51 STOs responded - a response rate of 74.5%. Of the 38 STOs, only 16 had crisis plans specific to the tourism industry (31%). Twenty STOs (40%) expressed that they did not have a crisis management plan specific to the tourism industry, whereas two (4%) expressed they did have a crisis management specific to tourism but could not release it.

Comparative analysis was conducted to analyze each plan based on four stages of crisis management: reduction (crisis awareness, political awareness, and standard operating procedures), readiness (crisis management plan and tourism planning), response (crisis response procedures, visitor assistance, and communication) and recovery (business continuity plan, human resources, and debriefing). The following findings represent the 16 STOs tourism crisis management plans.

Findings
In the reduction phase, most of the plans included crisis awareness components in their tourism crisis management plan, although 48% of the plans did not focus on raising political awareness in regards to the economic impact of a crises on the tourism industry. Interestingly, 90% of the plans did not include elements of standard operating procedures in crisis reduction specific to tourism.

Specific to the readiness phase, 62% of the plans included elements of a crisis management plan; however, 68% did not include focus on planning specific to tourism in their crisis management plans.

The response phase indicated that 63% of the plans included crisis response procedures in their crisis management plans. In contrast, only 45% of the plans included procedures to assist visitors. Most of the plans (86%) included communication procedures. In fact, most of the plans focused on external and media communication.

In the recovery phase, 51% of the plans addressed business continuity plans. In terms of human resource issues in a post crisis situation, only 11% of the plans indicated they used this procedure and only 31% planned for debriefing sessions to the tourism industry and political leadership after a crisis.

Conclusion and Recommendation
Most crisis management plans submitted were lacking information concerning standard operating procedures for reducing potential crises, tourism planning, addressing human resource issues following a crisis, and debriefing. Most plans focused on the communication aspect of crisis management rather than on a comprehensive aspect of crisis management. These findings are consistent with our findings from the Florida CVB/TDC crisis readiness study conducted last year.