Volga River Cruise Boat Accident

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Volga River Cruise Boat Accident

Introduction

As new technologies emerge, risk management in the tourism, hospitality, and events sectors involves ensuring that organizations, individuals, and entities are abreast of the rapid and dramatic changes that characterize the entirely industry. Potential risks may include reputational risks, innovation, natural disasters, and safety issues. Amirudin, Nawawi, & Salin (2017) found that effective management of risk allows entities to proactively prepare for potential loss, offer a safe environment, and reduce the occurrence of failure. The purpose of this essay is to analyse the ethical, legal, and sustainability dimensions of risk management within the tourism, event, and hospitality industry related to the Volga River accident involving an overloaded tourist boat in Russia. In this major disaster, more than 128 people died in a disaster that was labelled as the worst river incident in Russia’s recent history (Novik & Isayev, 2011). A double decker cruise boat sank more than three kilometers from the shores in Tatarstan. The essay will be structured into the following main parts: description of the case incident, legal dimensions of risk management related to the case in question, the ethical dimension of risk management as pertains to the Volga River Cruise Boat incident, and sustainability dimension of risk management. It will finalize with a conclusion section that would also summarize the main points highlighted throughout the essay while also restating them.

Case Description

Important details of the tragedy include the fact that the boat was overloaded and that the boat was at least 56 years old at the time of the accident in 2011, and was in very poor condition (Novik & Isayev, 2011). The boat did not have an operating license and a problem with its left side engine had been recorded before it sailed into a storm. Despite undergoing major repairs, the boat was still in very poor operation conditions. Only about 80 people were rescued. Such tourist cruises are popular for both foreigners and locals as the boats cut across Russia through Moscow and into the Caspian Sea.

Legal Dimension of Risk Management

Risk management refers to a process that has been designed or provides a general framework for organizations to help in monitoring, identification, analysis, evaluation, and management of unforeseen threats to their commercial operations. The notion of risk is found in all aspects of life in the real world, including the tourism, events, and hospitality industry (Amirudin, Nawawi, & Salin, 2017). In this context, the idea of industry risk management refers to an organizational procedure that is employed within the tourism and hospitality industry and destination businesses to ensure they reduce the risk or likelihood of adverse events happening to their business, clients, and staff members. The practice of risk management is supposed to comply with the regulations and laws that protect tourists and cruise ship users from any potential harm or violations.

The primary essence of risk management within the tourism industry is to protect the tourists, staff members, and the brand reputation of the tourism organization, in this case, the company running the Volga River Cruise Boat Accident. The laws and regulations in Russia directly affect the implementation and design of the risk management approach taken by the cruise ship’s parent organization. There are some primary legal aspects that risk managers working in the tourism sector should consider, including security obligation, consumer protection laws, occupational safety and health, intellectual property laws, and liability law (Backalov & Vidic, 2020). For example, since the cruise ship did not follow all the laws and regulations regarding the protection of the passengers against harm and loss of lives in case of a storm, there should be some legal ramifications to this effect. In this case, the boat owners are exposed to suits and liability to the victims and their families.

Legally, the Volga River Cruise Boat should have floating vests, advanced warning systems, and evacuation boats to warn passengers and call for rescue services in the face of an impending disaster. It should also have had an operating license, which would have meant meeting the legal and physical requirements of the Russian government’s cruise ship operations and standards. The cruise ship company is also supposed to get weather information and warnings ahead of embarking on a cruise to ensure that the weather is favorable to avoid any incidents that may lead to accidents or the ship’s capsizing. An analysis of the incident showed severe weather reports that had been issued for the location that the ship was expected to sail through. These warnings should have been sent to all the vessels that ply the river within the area to ensure they take the necessary precautions. There was no confirmation that the Volga River Cruise Boat had been sufficiently notified of these developments.

This incident shows that some critical legal issues impact risk management within the tourism sector. These issues include a duty of care, legal liability, negligence, due diligence, and contract (Birkel et al., 2019). The cruise ship company should have a clear sense of the kind of liability it would take and how to assign liability to its risk management practices. The duty of care is directly linked with the obligations to prevent the tourists and any other stakeholders from the harm caused by any emerging risks. In this case, the Volga River Cruise Boat should exercise the duty of care and due diligence before embarking on any river cruise. This could be done by actively seeking weather information and liaising with nearby cruise ships to maintain passenger and staff safety.

Ethical Dimension of Risk Management

Ethics reflects the basic beliefs and values towards what is considered wrong or right. It significantly affects the practices and attitudes of risk management within the tourism industry. If tourism industry practitioners fully practice and abide by ethics embraced by the general public regarding integrity and accountability, the tourism industry would be a better and safer place for all the stakeholders involved. Risk management implementation should concern two main ethical aspects: stakeholder management and resources management (Aven, 2016). Resources management involves the proper management of corporate resources ranging from human resources to tourism service management. On the other hand, stakeholder management is concerned with the interests of key people, including employees, customers, and others in the industry (Franzoni & Pelizzari, 2016). The expanding focus on the business ethics practice contributes to the management and formulation of risk management. It impacts the decision-making ways across various industries, including the tourism industry.

Integrating morality and ethics within the practices and framework of risk management could enhance the creation and delivery of a superior cruise ship experience in the case of the Volga River Cruise Boat. It would also contribute to the benefit of the local economy and tourism sector. Risk management within the tourism sector includes control and supervision of moral and ethical risks. For example, some ethical risks like leaking of passenger’s data by employees should be looked into. In the cruise ship incident, the management and operators of the Volga River Cruise Boat did not act ethically when dealing with their schedule and passengers on a fateful day. They prioritized profits over client and staff safety. Whether or not the Volga River Cruise Boat was aware of the weather changes is irrelevant because it failed to meet physical and technical qualifications. The operators opted to power ahead and made a quick profit even with the inefficiency. The ethical decision would have been to be honest with its customers and place their safety first over any potential profits or revenues lost on that day. This would have enhanced their public image and saved lives at the same time. The management of the Volga River Cruise Boat did not act ethically as it is supposed to be regarding risk management.

There are some aspects of ethics that affect risk management within the tourism segment. These include honesty, openness, dignity, and equitability (Mojtahedi & Oo, 2017). The management of the Volga River Cruise Boat did not portray any of these aspects on a fateful day. The incident shows that risk management within the tourism sector is being challenged by the failure of ethical management of tourist organizations. The cruise ship example shows that lack of proper ethical consideration puts lives at risk and leads to avoidable incidences. It has also exposed the organization to unnecessary scrutiny and turbulence from the Russian authorities. Due to the absence of ethics in their management, the Volga River Cruise Boat exposed the Russian maritime authority for negligent conduct and laxed rules regarding safety.

Sustainability Dimension of Risk Management

Sustainability in risk management (SRM) is a concept and strategy that demands an alignment of profit objectives with other policies and goals of an organization towards minimize negative impacts on the economy and local environment. The concept of sustainability means that the satisfaction of the present should not compromise the ability to meet the needs of the future generation. Within the tourism and hospitality industry, sustainable tourism is important to prevent tourism resources from being overexploited to ensure continuous tourism development over the coming decades. Some aspects of tourism sustainability affect risk management, including economic, environmental, and social sustainability. Whether the development of the tourism segment threatens the ecological and environmental system should be managed and examined by the region’s tourism management. The environmental risks that affect the local natural environment like water bodies, floods, or tornados adversely affect tourism development. Tourism organizations and companies ensure that they incorporate environmental sustainability in their activities to play a proactive role in preventing adverse weather patterns that threaten their operations. In the case study above, a number of issues relating to SRM emerge. For example, in the company’s risk management structure, there was a clear lack of a risk management policy. Despite a warning about a possible tornado, the ship’s management failed to continuous monitor the risks involved. The effect was that there was a discontinuity in terms of the economic resources, negative effects to the local tourism system, and loss of time and financial resources.

The first issue to be addressed in relation to sustainability of risk management in the case above would be an establishment of risk management best practices. Sustainability must include a communication plan, a risk management policy, and continuous risk monitoring. It allows tourism organizations to have a competitive edge within the tourism industry (Unger et al., 2015). Prior to the accident, the Volga River Cruise Boat was unable to identify potential risks in advance. It did not analyze the risk of the storm and failed to take precautionary measures to reduce the risk. As a consequence, the local tourism sector was hurt, including the local environment, the economy, the financial and personnel resources of the company. Business continuity was affected significantly. The sustainability dimension of ethical risk management could ensure that the tourism industry enjoys the continued business and continuity (Aliperti et al., 2019).

Sustainability measures would include a change of how vessels using natural resources along the river are equipped to handle and respond to disasters. From the case study, the investigations reveal an ill-equipped team, one that not only put the lives of people at risk but also likely to have caused harm to the environment. For tourism to continuously develop and integrate with reference to the environment and the people, sustainability will involve caring for ecological and human factors. Measures including a requirement to comply with environmental measures and a need to ensure that all tourism-related vessels are compliant with the same is recommended. The management should also incorporate the concept of shared commitment. Incorporating environmental sustainability within the organization’s policies ensures the workers know that the shipping organization is committed to environmental conservation (Kwesi-Buor et al., 2019). Sharing this objective with tourism service and product suppliers and tourists could make sure that they are expected to follow a set of guidelines when interacting with the host community (Falkner & Hiebl, 2015). This would also attract like-minded people that can pick up the synergy of environmental sustainability.

Conclusion

The essay has discussed the incident that affected the Volga River Cruise Boat in Russia. The discussion followed three key areas: legal dimension of risk management, ethical dimension of risk management, sustainability dimension of risk management. The analysis shows that the boat did not diligently abide by risk management’s legal and ethical dimensions. It also ignored Russian rules and regulations on cruise ships and boats operating in the rivers. The company’s negligence and failure to exercise due diligence exposed its staff members and clients to an avoidable event that led to the loss of hundreds of lives and soiling the organization’s reputation. It also exposed the entire tourism sector in Russia and Europe at large to issues relating to the sustainability of such river excavations and cruise tours.

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