Tourism destinations in every corner of the globe face the virtual certainty of experiencing a disaster of one form or another at some point in their history. Despite this, few destinations have properly developed disaster management plans in place to help them cope with such eventualities. Among the reasons for this is the limited amount of systematic research that has been carried out in the field. This paper addresses this problem by drawing on insights from the broader disaster management literature to produce a generic model for analysing and developing tourism disaster management strategies. A set of prerequisites and principles of effective tourism disaster management planning is also provided.