PATA and EATOF Bring Crisis Resilience Training to Gangwon State

PATA and the East Asia Inter-Regional Tourism Federation (EATOF) are running a Tourism Destination Resilience (TDR) Training Workshop in South Korea's Gangwon State today, November 11, aimed at preparing local tourism operators for crises before they hit revenue.

The session gathers three groups with a direct stake in how the destination sells itself: the Gangwon Tourism Foundation, municipal tourism authorities and local tourism businesses. The agenda covers risk identification and assessment across environmental, economic and operational categories, plus crisis communication, emergency planning and coordinated response — the operational layer that determines how quickly a destination recovers bookings after a disruption.

Why does Gangwon need this now?

The timing isn't accidental. Gangwon is wrapping up its 2025-2026 Visit Gangwon Year campaign, a push designed to lift visitor numbers. Growth brings its own problems, and the region now has to manage demand while keeping the destination safe and sustainable.

The risk profile is concrete. The state, known for its national parks, coastal attractions and winter sports facilities, faces seasonal forest fires, extreme winter weather, fluctuations in visitor demand and overcrowding during peak periods. Each of those can shut down revenue streams for lodging, tours and transport sellers with little warning.

For distributors and operators in the region, the workshop is essentially free technical assistance in continuity planning. The takeaway: Gangwon's tourism economy is trying to convert a marketing-driven growth cycle into something it can defend when weather or demand turns.

What is the TDR programme?

The workshop sits inside PATA's broader TDR programme, which blends online learning resources with in-person training to help destinations assess risks and sharpen crisis preparedness. In plain terms, PATA (the Pacific Asia Travel Association) is productizing resilience as a training product for DMOs (destination marketing organizations) and their stakeholders.

PATA plans to widen that portfolio in 2027, with training and professional development focused on destination resilience, sustainability, marketing and artificial intelligence. That expansion signals where the association sees future demand from its membership: not just promotion, but operational capability building.

The takeaway: PATA is positioning itself as a training provider for destination management, with AI added to the syllabus by 2027.

What did the leaders say?

PATA CEO Noor Ahmad Hamid framed resilience as continuous work rather than a checkbox. "Building resilience is not a one-time effort, but an ongoing process that requires preparedness, collaboration, and a shared commitment to the long-term well-being of destinations and their communities," he said.

EATOF secretary-general Lee Dong-hee tied the workshop to the federation-level relationship and the underlying pressure driving it. "Through this workshop, we aim to strengthen cooperation between PATA and EATOF and work together to address the challenges that climate change poses to the tourism industry," he said.

Neither claim is a measured result — the workshop's impact on Gangwon's crisis readiness won't show up until the next forest fire season or winter weather event tests it. What's verifiable today is the mechanism: two regional bodies combining training capacity to shore up a destination that just spent two years marketing itself hard.

Expect the PATA-EATOF partnership to surface again in the 2027 training cycle, when the association's expanded curriculum rolls out.