Destination governance in times of crisis and the role of public-private partnerships in tourism recovery from Covid-19: The case of Macao

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has had a significant negative impact on many industries, tourism being among the most severely impacted. To recover from the crisis speedily, a responsive mode of governance that can draw on different stakeholders’ efforts is required. Through qualitative interviews with key informants from major associations and government offices related to tourism, this study examines how Macao adopted public-private partnership governance to aid the recovery of its tourism industry. Specifically, the study investigates the roles of government and the crisis leader in post-COVID tourism recovery, the changes in consumer markets, and collaborative efforts of tourism business sectors and destination marketing organizations. This study contributes to deciphering how public-private partnerships can help tourism recovery, as well as the importance of crisis leadership in the process. The study also provides suggestions for industry partners regarding how they can act and respond to crises more effectively.

Introduction

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) which was declared a global pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 12 March 2020 has brought significant social, economic, and environmental costs globally. Among all industries, the tourism industry is one of the most severely impacted. As the pandemic spread, many countries and cities closed their borders. In 2020, international tourism arrivals declined by 93 percent compared with 2019 (Tourism International, 2021). The pandemic also brought significant changes in consumers’ requirements and behaviors, posing great challenges to tourism destination managers and tourism business operators (Sigala, 2020).

To recover from the crisis, an effective and a responsive mode of governance has been required (Neupane, 2021; Vargas, 2020). Governance concerns how societies are governed (Pierre & Peters, 2005). It is generally referred to as “all patterns of power, authority and rule that can secure order, and it is relevant to situations where there is a hierarchical state, where the state depends on others, or where the state plays little or no role” (Wan & Bramwell, 2015, p. 316). Accordingly, an effective and responsive mode of governance is needed to secure order, especially in times of crisis such as COVID-19. Ordinarily, governments tend to rely on traditional bureaucratic command and control mechanisms to govern tourism (Valente et al., 2015). However, conventional types of governance may be outmoded and inadequate in the context of sudden and severe crises such as pandemics. Thus, effective and responsive governance for tourism crisis management requires a government to shift its role from a steerer to that of an enabler in order to facilitate stakeholder collaboration toward common goals (Pierre & Peters, 2005). This is especially crucial for the tourism industry, given its highly interdependent nature (Paraskevas et al., 2013). The urgency and importance of establishing public-private partnerships during the pandemic was recently underscored by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) in its 2020 “Global Guidelines to Restart Tourism” report (UNWTO, 2020).

Prior studies underscore the crucial role played by governments (Pierre & Peters, 2005; Vargas, 2020). For example, during a pandemic, the government is the key player to address major challenging issues, such as establishing isolation measures, hygiene requirements, and ongoing support for tourism businesses. Some studies also point out the important roles played by the city's leader, whose leadership style and methods can significantly affect the recovery of the tourism sector (Mitroff, 2004; Wardman, 2020). At the same time, governments need to facilitate public-private partnerships to ensure different sectors fully understand and cooperate with new government requirements and to assist in offering new and innovative tourism products to accommodate market changes (Lai & Wong, 2020). It is therefore necessary for research to address not only the role of government in times of crisis such as the COVID pandemic, but also how it can forge networks of effective partnerships between public and private stakeholders in times of crisis, and how tourism-reliant communities, policymakers, and industry can work together via shared roles and formulate strategies for recovery.

Macao is selected as a case study to understand how public and private sectors partnered to spur the recovery of the tourism industry from COVID-19. Macao's heavy reliance on the tourism and casino gaming sectors rendered it economically vulnerable during the pandemic. Although as of August 2021 Macao had accumulated only 60 COVID cases and no deaths, travel restrictions caused visitor numbers to drop from 39.4 million in 2019 to 5.9 million in 2020 (Macao Statistics and Census Service, 2021). Although various regions and states implemented different types and levels of stringent policies and measures to control the COVID-19 pandemic (Hale et al., 2021), not all governments enjoyed the full support and cooperation of different sectors in society (Jørgensen et al., 2021). Macao's contrasting experience is remarkable, government and tourism business operators having engaged collaboratively in a rare demonstration of public-private partnership, resulting in later improvements in visitor numbers and revenues (Liu et al., 2021). It is therefore worthwhile to investigate the experience of Macao in adopting and pursuing a public-private partnership approach to recover from the pandemic.

The resilience and recovery of tourism destinations via effective governance appears to be seriously understudied. For example, many studies relating to COVID-19 and tourism are confined to how the hospitality sectors and governments responded to the crisis (Lai & Wong, 2020; Loi et al., 2021) or the impact of the pandemic on cities’ hospitality and tourism industry (Lim & To, 2021; Liu et al., 2021). Also, despite the increasing number of studies on COVID-19 and tourism, few have applied theories or perspectives of governance and the role of public-private partnerships in their study framework. Sigala (2020) advocates the need to adopt relevant perspectives to approach tourism in the post-COVID era:

COVID-19 tourism research should not only be the means to overcome the crisis and resume previously charted economic growth trajectories. It should lead to the refocusing, repurposing, reframing and reinterpretation of research questions, methodologies and outcomes, so that tourism stakeholders can in turn redirect their actioning, conduct and evolution. To that end, COVID-19 tourism research will be benefited by embedding, adapting, reflecting and expanding the theoretical lenses and perspectives of a much greater plurality of disciplines and constructs to guide and implement research (Sigala, 2020, p. 314).

Building on the perspective of governance and the literature on public-private partnerships and tourism crisis management, the current study examines the governance of Macao in its tourism recovery from the crisis. In particular, this research has three aims:

• To investigate the roles and strategies adopted by the Macao government (particularly the city's leader) in tourism industry recovery.

• To shed light on how the Macao government has forged an effective network of partnerships between public and private stakeholders in times of exceptional crisis such as COVID-19.

• To explore how a public-private partnership governance approach can be effectively applied in tourism recovery efforts.