مدیریت بحران و خارج شدن از بحران: چگونگی عملکرد رستوران های هنگ کنگ در برابر بیماری حاد تنفسی "سارس"

The 2003 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak constitutes an example of the many crises that a restaurant may encounter. This article reviews a typology of crises, examines the crisis response of restaurants in Hong Kong, illustrates how local restaurants deal with this unprecedented situation and develop strategies for management and recovery. The lessons and experience gained from dealing with the SARS crisis serve as references for restaurants in other destinations when they face similar crises in future.

Restaurants in Hong Kong have already been put under great pressure to survive in the harsh market environment resulting from the Asian financial crisis of 1997, but the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak in March 2003 was a death sentence to the industry. The SARS epidemic has affected nearly 8588 people and killed 724 worldwide. Hong Kong people were afraid of venturing out to crowded public areas and shopping malls, causing a significant drop in business for restaurants. By any measure, business levels were a far shot away from the levels prior to SARS. Chinese restaurants where people eat family style from shared platters of food in a crowded environment were the worst affected having lost as much as 90% of their business since the outbreak began (Geoffrey and Prystay, 2003). This reveals vulnerability in the catering industry's ability to respond to crisis, especially epidemics like SARS that spread panic and disrupt the everyday activities of the people. However, some restaurants have managed to stay afloat, with some even turning a little profit. By studying the crisis response of these restaurants, we can formulate a crisis response and recovery plan to serve as a future reference for other restaurants facing similar disasters. Following Stafford et al. (2002), we propose in this paper a four-step crisis management procedure to deal with crises like SARS. Fig. 1 shows the four steps in the process. Step one is categorization of crises in which restaurant managers should classify the crisis they are dealing with into one of the seven categories outlined in Table 1 below. Identification of the crisis type is important because it helps managers find the appropriate measures to keep the crisis under control. Next, the extent and type of damage is assessed, and then tactics are formulated and implemented to combat the crisis. The last step of the crisis management process is to evaluate the effectiveness of the recovery strategies using a feedback loop that enables managers to refine the tactics until the crisis is brought under control.

Whilst the SARS crisis is a natural disaster, the methods employed by local restaurant managers to deal with the challenge serves as a good reference for other restaurants who may be inflicted with similar crises in future. In this outbreak, local restaurants have been adept in responding to the crisis. Through a combination of the cost reduction and revenue enhancement strategies outlined above, alongside a variety of additional measures, several restaurants have even succeeded in turning a profit under the adverse influence of the outbreak. One important issue uncovered from the SARS outbreak is that nearly all Hong Kong restaurants do not have a crisis plan. The literature on crisis management has stressed the importance of a plan for crisis management (see, for example, Fearn-Banks, 1996; Coombs, 1999; Barton, 2001). To survive a crisis, a restaurant must have formal guidelines and procedures for communicating to employees, as well as the general public about various reactive measures a restaurant plans to undertake in the event of a crisis. A restaurant's contingency plan should not cover epidemics like SARS only, but should also look into recovery measures for all the other six types of crises we described in Table 1. In formulating a crisis management plan, a restaurant must look at its needs and goals, establish a risk management policy and communicate it to all staff. The crisis management plan should establish clear accountabilities and responsibilities for identifying, managing and monitoring risks. In the planning process, restaurant managers must trade-off the risk involved and the costs of the measures to be undertaken, and should encourage openness and participation from all staff. Finally, the plan should also incorporate a review process to enable a restaurant to learn from each crisis for more effective crisis management in future. Finally, restaurants that prepare for a crisis should use a team approach. The use of teams is standard practice among leading corporations today (Devine et al., 1999). According to Coombs (1999), a crisis management team is a cross-functional group of people within the organization who have been designated to handle any crisis. Previous research has found that a crisis team approach has a better chance of formulating a crisis management plan that is effective (Pearson and Clair, 1998; Fink, 1986; Pearson et al., 1997).