Risk Management & Business Continuity

ASF Tourism identifies its main risks, assigns an owner to each, and keeps functioning through disruption — including disruption affecting a facility’s accreditation cycle already in progress.

1. What’s on the register

A register rates each risk by likelihood and impact across the areas most relevant to a young, growing programme: standards integrity (conflict of interest, panel independence, covered under TOUR-POL-02); assessment integrity (Surveyor and Monitor conduct); confidentiality of a facility’s own data during an open assessment cycle; capacity (having enough certified Surveyors, Coordinators, and Monitors as more countries come on board); reputational risk — ASF Tourism being only as credible as its weakest decision; and the risk that a local partner organisation relationship doesn’t develop as hoped in a given country. The Tourism Board reviews the register twice a year, and whenever a new country partnership or conditional module is added.

2. Keeping going through disruption

• Critical functions are identified: the published Standard and policy set, the Surveyor/Coordinator/Monitor credential record, active facility assessment files, and communication with any facility currently mid-cycle.
• All ASF Tourism roles can work remotely; assessment records are backed up under ASF’s existing data protection practice.
• A facility whose published decision date is put at risk by a disruption — a Monitor’s unavailability, a local disruption in-country — is notified directly, rather than left to simply wait past the date.

3. A note on scale, honestly

ASF Tourism is a new, small programme with no confirmed local partnerships yet (see the Tourism home page for the current, honest count). This policy exists so that the discipline is in place from the start, not bolted on once something goes wrong — not because the risks it covers have already materialised at scale.