Recovering from a Natural Disaster: Welcoming the Visitor Back

The webinar featured an insightful panel discussion from destination organization leaders from Lee County, Florida, Asheville, North Carolina and Pasadena, California. Each destination has been impacted by a major natural disaster in recent years:

• Hurricane Ian hit Southwest Florida in September 2022, wreaking devastation on communities in Lee County, including Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva
• Hurricane Helene swept through much of the Southeastern United States in September 2024, causing particularly extensive damage in the Asheville/Buncombe County region
• The L.A. (Palisades and Eaton) fires of January 2025 destroyed homes, businesses and natural resources throughout Southern California

Our expert panel—Vic Isley of Explore Asheville, Kristin McGrath of Visit Pasadena and Tamara Pigott of the Lee County Visitor & Convention Bureau—shared hard-earned insights and wisdom from their challenging experiences.  

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U.S. Travelers said natural disasters impacted their leisure travels in 2024 

Source: State of the American Traveler, November 2024

Natural disasters have had a significant impact on travel in the U.S. in recent years, a pattern that looks to continue in 2025. Our November 2024 Stewardship & Sustainability edition of the State of the American Traveler reported that around one-in-six (16%) of American leisure travelers have had their travel impacted by a natural disaster in the last year. This represents disruption to hundreds of millions of trips—and several hundred billions of dollars of visitor spending. Over half (54%) of these U.S. travelers were impacted by hurricanes or tropical storms, one-in-six (16%) by flooding, and one-in-eight (13%) by wildfires. 

A major challenge of recovering from a natural disaster is communicating with travelers that a destination is open and ready to welcome back visitors.

Research undertaken by Future Partners over a number of years and across a wide range of destinations shows that a significant minority of visitors can perceive a destination as still heavily damaged and only partially open or even closed to visitors, even months after a natural disaster.  For example, Future Partners’ research on Asheville, N.C., showed that even five months after the September 2024 flooding from Hurricane Helene, around four-in-ten US travelers perceived Asheville as only partially open. 

A critical part of any destination’s disaster recovery planning should therefore include how to reach potential visitors with an effective marketing and communications program.  Here is a five-part recovery marketing and communications toolkit: 

1. Develop a Comprehensive Disaster Management Plan. It is critical that your recovery marketing and communications program is part of a full, comprehensive disaster management and recovery plan, developed with other agencies and regularly updated and tested. This comprehensive plan will include critical elements that support the success of your recovery marketing: effective crisis communication during the event, training and support of local tourism businesses in handling a disaster and adequate earmarked reserve funds to continue functioning when the visitor economy is dramatically reduced.    

2. Consult with Local Government, Residents and Businesses. Depending on the impact of the natural disaster, reopening to visitors may be a quick or very gradual process. What’s more, your key stakeholders across the community may have different perspectives on the timing and speed of any reopening that need to be managed. It is important to connect, consult and inform key stakeholders on when and how visitors will be welcomed back. 

3. Invest in Research and Data to Guide your Recovery Marketing and Communications. Research on potential visitor perceptions of your destination after a natural disaster will guide decisions on the right messaging. Plus, critical performance data, like website analytics and booking data, will provide valuable insights on your progress in reopening and the impact of the recovery marketing campaign. 

4. Develop a Recovery Roadmap. There will be different phases in the reopening and recovery of your destination—and therefore in your marketing and communications. Develop a draft roadmap of these phases and be ready to revise and update the document after an actual natural disaster. Below is an example of a Recovery Roadmap from Lee County. It summarizes key parts of planning the marketing campaign, including traveler attitudes to be addressed, “traveler truths” to be shared and the key messaging at each phase of the recovery process.

5. Develop, Implement and Refine Your Marketing and Communications Program. Supported by the above steps, develop and launch your marketing and communications program.

Here are 5 practical tips to ensure you reach the right potential visitors with the right messages: 

• Develop and test clear messaging that resonates emotionally and conveys critical information. Test your creative on potential visitors, local businesses and residents.  Imagery and video is a simple and powerful way for a destination to reinforce that they are open and welcoming visitors. See this example from the My Fort Myers Campaign:

• Integrate testimonials, ambassadors, and other user-generated content to reinforce the authenticity of the messaging. Timely and local content that addresses the questions and concerns of potential travelers carries significant authority. 

• Focus your marketing and communications on past visitors who know, love and want to support your destination. 

• Support paid media with PR and social media messaging that provides a clear and positive, but honest picture of your recovery and showcases what visitors can expect. For example, Explore Asheville created the campaign “Asheville is Calling You Home” to welcome visitors back. Using Eric Church’s song Carolina to set the tone, they tapped into nostalgia and emotional storytelling to inspire travelers to return, support local businesses and be part of the city’s comeback.