Crisis Management in Hospitality

Slide 1/

Crisis Management Manager of hotels facing several challenges in a continuous changing environment but always need to maintain the hotel position, and meet all expectations from customers, stakeholders, and media.

Crisis management though, is a helping tool for manager to lead a business successful and especially helps to keep the position during harder times when business is suffering (Ribarić 2010, 573). 

Slide 2/

 It is necessary to clarify and define what a crisis actually is. The Pacific Asia Travel Association (2003, in Malhotra and Venkatesh 2009, 67) defines it as follows: “A crisis is any situation that has the potential to affect long-term confidence in an organization or a product, or which may interfere with its ability to continue operating normally.”

Nowadays crisis management has become an essential part in all kind of businesses.

Slide 3/

Why it is important to use it?

And latest since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, crisis management has become an important part in the hospitality industry, too. It is an effective management tool to get to know what kind of threats there are to a business and helps to anticipate the threats for a quick response, and to control the damage to the business (Barton 2008, 8). 

Slide 4/

Categories

Crisis management needs to evaluate the probable crisis that can occur and those can be categorized in four different main groups which are

 (1) natural crisis,

(2) civil conflicts,

(3) epidemics,

(4) technology failures (Tse 2006, 30; Booth 1993 in Cushnahan 2003, 327). 

Slide 5/

Examples.

The following subsection will show examples of crises that can occur from each category.

1. Natural crisis are happenings that are caused by the nature such as: heavy storms, hurricanes, floods, bush-fires, earthquakes, avalanches, tsunamis, etc.

2. Civil conflicts are mostly based on political tensions whose can be within one country but can also occur between different countries such as: demonstrations, strikes, war, terrorism, etc. but also nonpolitical civil conflicts existing, such as: shootings, violence, suicides, sabotage, etc.

3. Epidemics are diseases that spread quickly and widely and usually throughout more than one country such as: SARS, foot and mouth disease, swine flu, etc.

 4. Technology failures are associated with power blackouts, computer irregularities, aircraft crashes, nuclear meltdown, etc.

Slide 6/

Separating the crises gives already an overview of the diversity of possible threats that can occur and an idea of how different the approaches of solutions will be.

Slide 7/

Keys of crisis management

The crisis management process Taking immediate and decisive action when a crisis hits a hotel or the whole destination it is located in should be planned carefully. The key of crisis management for a company is to act proactive and not reactive.

Proactive means that a business is prepared for a crisis although it is never hundred per cent possible to be prepared for a crisis because it is an event which cannot be foreseen.

...