Power-holding strategic decision-makers play an important role in tourism organisational dynamics due to the industry comprising a large number of medium to small businesses. Considering the escalation of disaster risk faced by tourism destinations around the world in recent years, such a lack of research on the strategic decision-makers’ disaster management is somewhat disquieting. The current research therefore intends to fill the gap in this research area. The current research applied the theory of planned behaviour to understand the factors that influence disaster cognition and the planning intentions of strategic decision-makers. Approach: In alignment with a positivist and deductive theoretical approach, a quantitative research design is considered most appropriate for the current research. A data set of 301 samples were collected through a questionnaire survey. AMOS SEM technique was used for data analysis. The results suggest that both attitude towards disaster planning and disaster cognition influence the intention to undertake disaster planning. Past disaster experiences, disaster training and level of education seem to influence disaster cognition among SDMAS. However, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, do not show any significant influence on the intention to undertake disaster planning.