Tourism Risk Management

🚫 Customers don’t like negativity. There is always a way to focus on a positive message. This is how Copenhagen did it. Tell customers “don’t do this” or “here’s the problem” and you risk the opposite effect. Most companies communicate problems. Companies and governments talks about restrictions. But nobody likes it. 🌍 Great brands (and cities) flip the script. They turn challenges into opportunities. Take Copenhagen. The city faced overtourism. Instead of saying “we need fewer tourists”, it asked: “how can we make visitors part of the solution?” 👉 The result: CopenPay. Tourists earn free meals, boat rides, bike rentals, or museum discounts when they make sustainable choices — like taking the train, helping in an urban garden, or exploring less-visited neighborhoods. The impact? ✅ Relieved pressure from crowded areas ✅ Boosted local small businesses ✅ Strengthened sustainability & community ✅ Created happier visitors ✨ This is CX at its best: no restrictions, no negativity — just new opportunities for everyone. 🚀 The lesson: if you want people on board, don’t focus on the problem. Invite them into a chance to make things better.

🇬🇧 Worth checking out the updated #RESIST framework designed by the UK government in order to embrace information threats more fully. 🔹A pragmatic approach focused on perceptions and a full-blown model for any institution developing its own strategic communications methodology 👉🏼RESIST Counter‑Disinformation Toolkit : a structured framework for government communicators to identify, assess and respond to disinformation. 👉🏼The toolkit frames disinformation as a risk not only to communications per se, but to policy outcomes, national security, international reputation, and democratic legitimacy. 🔹It provides checklists, matrices (ex : for prioritisation: does a message harm ability to deliver services? does it affect vulnerable audiences? etc.) and guidance on measurement. ♻️ A 6️⃣ step approach : 1️⃣ Recognise: identify possible instances of mis/dis/malinformation, check the techniques (fabrication, disguised identity, rhetoric, symbolism etc) (FIRST indicators). 2️⃣ Early Warning: Monitor the information space for signals of emerging threats, vulnerabilities, target audiences, relevant narratives. 3️⃣ Situational Insight: Turn monitoring data into actionable insights : what’s happening, who is vulnerable, what narratives are evolving, what the context is. 4️⃣ Impact Analysis: Assess the potential damage: what are the objectives of the threat actor, the reach, the likelihood, how does it affect your priorities/responsibilities. Use structured analysis rather than just “gut feeling”. 5️⃣ Strategic Communication: Decide whether and how to respond. Not all incidents merit a public response — some may self-correct. If you respond: ensure the truth is well told, choose appropriate channels/audiences, embed resilience building, engage partnerships. 6️⃣ Tracking Effectiveness: Measure output vs outcome; track metrics (reach, behaviour change, attitude change) and learn from each response. Underlying principles 🔹A government communications function must support resilience: of institutions, public trust, policy delivery. 🔹Communications is a proactive posture : pre-bunking, shaping narratives is as important as reactive posture (debunking). 🔹Partnership matters because information threats do not respect organisational boundaries : across gov departments, with civil society, academia, media, international partners 🔹Focus on audiences & vulnerabilities: recognising that some audiences are more exposed (due to digital skills, language, socio-economic factors) and that those vulnerabilities shape how to tailor prevention/response. How this could apply to other nations 🔹 a structured framework to impart discipline & consistency in detecting and responding to threats. 🔹 helps build an institutional capacity 🔹 supports the shift from reactive (respond when scandal/hit) to proactive risk management

⚠️ CYBERSECURITY ALERT: Travel eSIMs may be convenient, but they come with hidden risks. A recent investigation by Northeastern University, reported by Juha Saarinen in iTnews, found that many travel eSIM providers route user traffic through foreign networks—including China—without informing customers. The study revealed that popular providers like Holafly and Airalo sometimes pushed traffic through China Mobile, assigning users IP addresses that made devices appear to be located inside China. This raises major concerns about data jurisdiction, surveillance, and access to restricted services. Even more alarming, the barrier to becoming an eSIM reseller is low. With just an email and payment method, resellers can access sensitive identifiers (IMSI numbers) and in some cases approximate device location. Silent “phone home” behaviour was also detected, with eSIMs quietly sending data to overseas servers. This connects with long-standing telecom security issues. China’s networks, already scrutinised for SS7 and 4G vulnerabilities, have been leveraged for surveillance and traffic interception. The fact that travel eSIMs route traffic through such infrastructures could open doors for snooping, interception, and even exploitation by state-level or criminal actors. With global travel accelerating, regulators and telecom providers must prioritise transparency and stronger safeguards. For travellers and businesses, awareness is the first defence. #CyberSecurity #TelecomSecurity #eSIM #DataPrivacy #China #Surveillance #linkedinnewsaustralia #linkedinnewsusa #linkedinnewseurope #linkedinnewsasia Reference: “Travel eSIMs secretly route traffic over Chinese and undisclosed networks: study” by Juha Saarinen, iTnews, August 19, 2025. image credit: Grok AI generated image

Florence on the Brink: We all need to SAVE 🛟 the Cradle of the Renaissance from the Crush of Overtourism After 25 years of greeting the Ponte Vecchio, I now battle selfie sticks for standing room - proof that if Florence doesn’t change course fast, it will follow Venice into becoming a beautiful postcard no one can truly experience 🤨…. 🔹 Venice shows us the endgame with roughly 30 million visitors a year - most of them day trippers (coming of large cruise ships) the lagoon city has resorted to an access fee that now doubles for last minute arrivals on 54 peak days. Yet it hasn’t made any difference - earlier this week, I had to call it quits after spending only 3 hours in the city as it was impossible to even get on and off the vaporetta’s. 🔹 Unfortunately, Firenze is sprinting down the same path. 15 million visitors expected this year - against a population of just 350k. In the UNESCO listed centro storico (under two square miles) that works out to 25 tourists per resident, and over 10.5 million people funnelled into that tiny core annually 🔹 The city is pushing back—but the clock is ticking and I don’t think what’s being done is anywhere enough. The moves won’t matter unless the city leaders, businesses, and travelers start to treat overtourism as the existential threat it is. Lose Florence and we lose a living chapter of human creativity (that’s what is at stake here❗️) What Florence should do immediately: ➖ Cap daily arrivals in sensitive zones (the Duomo, Uffizi, Ponte Vecchio, Piazzale Michelangelo) ➖ Introduce a staggered day-pass—priced lower for off-peak hours—to flatten hour-by-hour surges. ➖ Reward longer stays with tax discounts that keep money in local hands and reduce churn. What we as visitors owe the city and must do: ➖ Visit in shoulder seasons ➖ Spend with artisans, not chains ➖ Book locally owned lodging; even if it means skipping that “too good to be true” online deal. ➖ Treat piazzas as living rooms, not food courts; carry in, carry out. I’ll keep coming back, because Firenze still has the rare power to stir the soul. But if we don’t change course now, the next generation will inherit a Renaissance museum park instead of a vibrant Tuscan city with unmatched class and heritage! Let’s prove that love for a place is measured not by how many of us show up, but by how gently we tread when we do. #ResponsibleTravel #SustainableTourism #Florence #Overtourism #CulturalHeritage

Safety Innovation Advent: Day 2 - Send a Voice Message 🎄🎅 In the lead-up to Christmas, I’m sharing an activity or practical tip each day to help you innovate in health and safety. Today’s tip: Use your voice to communicate when you'd normally text There's many ways to do this but try this today: Open LinkedIn messages and send a voice message to a colleague or connection - feel free to send it to me if you like! (check out the snapshot from a voice convo between Paul Clark & I a couple of years back). Go to messages and in the chat, tap the microphone icon, and record your message; it’s that simple! Why this matters in health and safety innovation: When it comes to communicating about risk, voice communication offers a distinct advantage. Listening to someone talk about a risk insight is completely different from reading it on a screen or in a report. On the sender's end, voice adds nuance: Tone, emotion, and emphasis bring clarity and intention to your message. Voice messages are also great for neurodiverse folks who struggle with written language. On the receiving end, listening fosters understanding: It activates a deeper, more human connection with the message. In health and safety, this can lead to better understanding and decision-making around risks, ensuring actions align with intent. 🔧 Pro Tip: Try sharing a risk observation or insight via voice message today (use the voice record function on your phone). Notice how it feels more personal and engaging compared to text. Stay tuned for more practical tips in this series by following my profile and the hashtags #SafetyInnovationAdvent #SafetyInnovation #SafetyTech.

🚨 Ethical Hacking | Responsible Disclosure | Payment Security 🔒 While performing an independent security assessment on a major hotel booking engine used by 3,000+ hotels across multiple regions, I identified a critical price tampering vulnerability affecting thousands of listings across the platform’s network. 💡 Summary of Discovery: During the booking process, I found that the system was trusting client-side inputs, allowing attackers to modify the payable amount and confirm bookings at any desired price. By intercepting the booking request and altering the amount (for example, from ₹5565 to ₹1), the transaction was still processed successfully exposing a severe flaw in payment integrity across thousands of listings. ⚙️ Technical Insight: Payment and booking APIs were accepting manipulated requests Server-side validation was missing for critical fields like amount and hotel_id This vulnerability could lead to large-scale financial losses and fraudulent bookings ✅ Responsible Action Taken: I immediately reported the findings to the platform’s security team through a coordinated disclosure process, sharing: Detailed proof-of-concept (PoC) and logs Technical recommendations to fix the issue, including: • Server-side validation for price integrity • Request signing (HMAC or token-based validation) • Payment callback verification • Monitoring and alerting for abnormal payment activity 💬 The vulnerability has been responsibly disclosed with no exploitation, data access, or service disruption involved. My goal was purely to enhance platform security and prevent future abuse. 🌍 Responsible disclosure protects both users and businesses. Every vulnerability fixed is one less opportunity for attackers. #CyberSecurity #EthicalHacking #ResponsibleDisclosure #BugBounty #AppSec #InfoSec #WebSecurity #PaymentSecurity #VulnerabilityResearch

🌏 Destination Stewardship in the Age of Overcrowding: What Bali Must Learn from Global Cities The World Travel & Tourism Council’s latest report is both a wake-up call and a roadmap. Titled “Managing Destination Overcrowding: A Call to Action from the Travel & Tourism Private Sector”, it makes the case that the real risk to popular destinations like Bali isn’t tourism itself — but the failure to manage it systemically. 📉 In Europe, the report warns that reducing tourism to “average” levels could erase $245 billion in GDP and nearly 3 million jobs within 3 years. But it equally shows that unchecked visitor pressure, if not addressed with evidence-based planning, threatens the very essence of place — and with it, long-term competitiveness. So how does this apply to Bali? 👉 Bali is not “over-touristed” — it is under-managed. Much like Venice or Barcelona, Bali faces the consequences of: High visitor density in a few iconic nodes (e.g., Canggu, Seminyak, Ubud) Inadequate reinvestment of tourism revenues into public infrastructure Fragmented governance and regulatory asymmetry across regencies Resident alienation and diminishing pride in place What the WTTC proposes is highly relevant: ✅ Build a multi-sector Destination Stewardship Body with real mandates ✅ Co-create a shared destination vision, aligned with both residents and investors ✅ Deploy data-led visitor management and crowd-monitoring systems ✅ Ring-fence and transparently reinvest tourism taxes into mobility, waste, water, and culture ✅ Empower residents through meaningful participation and pride-of-place programming This isn’t about saying “no” to growth — it’s about saying “yes” to resilience, regeneration, and recalibration. 🔎 Bali can — and must — avoid the trap of simplistic solutions like blanket moratoriums or tourism taxes that are never reinvested. Instead, we need what this report calls “evidence-based governance” and a long-overdue pivot from destination marketing to destination management. 📣 As an advisor engaged across Bali’s tourism corridors and a proponent of a value-over-volume model, I urge our public, private, and community stakeholders to treat this report as a blueprint. Let’s not wait for the tipping point to act. Let’s make stewardship Bali’s new signature. Check out the report at: https://lnkd.in/g_Q9jUve #Bali2030 #TourismStrategy #DestinationStewardship #WTTC #SustainableTourism #ResilientDestinations #VisitorEconomy #ValueOverVolume #DataDrivenDecisions #HospitalityStrategy

Should Tourists Visit Museums? (Spoiler: It's Complicated) The tourism paradox no one talks about: Museums need visitors. But when tourism becomes extractive rather than reciprocal, everyone loses. Yes, tourists should visit museums — but let's be honest about what that actually means for the institutions serving them. The Reality Check Tourism revenue keeps many museums afloat. In some cities, international visitors account for 60-70% of attendance. That funding supports conservation, research, and community programs. But here's what the glossy narrative misses: The over-tourism trap — Venice's museums struggle with crowds that make meaningful engagement impossible. Staff spend more time managing queues than facilitating learning. The economic imbalance — Tourism dollars often bypass local communities while museums absorb the infrastructure costs of serving massive visitor numbers. The mission drift — When institutions optimize for tourist expectations, they risk displacing the local audiences they were founded to serve. A Better Question Not "should tourists visit?" but "how can museum visits benefit both travelers AND communities?" The answer requires: Sustainable visitor management that protects the experience and the collection Revenue models that support local cultural ecosystems, not just the institution Programming that serves residents first, tourists second Honest interpretation that includes difficult histories, not just feel-good narratives Museums aren't just "windows into a nation's soul." They're contested spaces where power, memory, and resources intersect. Tourism can support that work. Or it can undermine it. The difference lies in how we structure the relationship. What's a museum visit that genuinely changed how you understood a place — not just confirmed what you expected to see? #eminspost #eminmuseum #museumlover #MuseumStudies #CulturalTourism #SustainableHeritage #MuseumEthics #Overtourism

Visual explanations can help simplify complex processes. So I bundled my 20 most helpful risk management infographics into one carousel. Each was born out of real projects and challenges I’ve worked on. Each tried to answer a simple question: How can we make this easier to understand? This compilation brings together: → Clear breakdowns of key risk concepts per ISO 14971 → Visual explanations based on ISO 14971 → The most engaged posts I’ve shared (5k+ likes, 300k+ impressions combined) You’ll find these visuals helpful if: → You’re new to risk management → You’re onboarding colleagues → You need support material for internal trainings Yes, you can reuse them in your teams. That’s the point. I have also compiled a visual guide to the main principles of ISO 14971, a good refresher for any level (35pages): https://lnkd.in/d_Bz_3NH And if you’re looking for more hands-on tools: Over the years I’ve merged the best documentation practices into a template bundle. → They help you document risk management correctly → Present your data clearly → Save time by not starting from a blank page → Use tools that have been proven during audits (Risk management per ISO 14971 SOP,Hazard Traceability Matrix, RMP, B/R analysis methodo. and RMR) A practical approach, ready to use, and adaptable to your context : https://lnkd.in/eTw2VVXp Hope it helps.

☎️ Public Safety Communicators (Emergency Managers, 911 Dispatchers, Law Enforcement, and others): if you are responsible for alerts and warnings in your community, you should know about these FREE tools that were paid for by FEMA-IPAWS to help you do your work better. ⚠️ 1. The Warning Lexicon bit.ly/WarningLexicon provides you with templates for 48 hazards. Download the supplemental material that will direct you on how to write a message that includes the Source, Hazard + Impact, Location, Time, and Protective Action Guidance. The contents are provided in the document making it a simple process of selecting pre-vetted and pre-verified messaging contents. ⚠️ 2. The Message Design Dashboard, hosted on the FEMA-IPAWS Assistive Tools Platform. The MDD was built under a contract from FEMA-IPAWS to integrate the data from the Warning Lexicon into a simple to use software that is freely available here: atp.aws.fema.gov ⚠️ 3. Self-Paced Training on how to write effective messages for alerts and warnings. This is NOT a 'how to use the IPAWS technology' course. It teaches you the science behind alerts and warnings and will improve your ability to write effectively for short messages. Go here: bit.ly/Learn2Warn ⚠️ 4. Not paid for by FEMA, but free to access and use: Evidence-based analyses of historical WEAs, with explanations on why the WEA was effective or not, can be found on the blog posts contained in The Warn Room. Go here: thewarnroom.com Please share these resources with your friends and colleagues. Effective messaging is the last mile of an effective warning system and we can improve outcomes by applying evidence-based guidance. #notwrittenbyAI Steven Kuhr Steve Staeger Kelly McKinney Zach Stanford Ron Prater Seth Schalet Rob Dale, CEM Manny Centeno Micki Olson, Ph.D Hugh Walpole, PhD Madison McGuire Carol Freeman Carol Parks Travis Cryan, CEM Brian Murray Clint Osborn Kim Zagaris