شیوه های مدیریت بحران هتلداری : از هتل های لوکس هند

This study examines hospitality crisis management practices within the context of the Indian hospitality industry. The study is a replication of a study previously conducted in Israel. The study employs a questionnaire that evaluates the importance and usage of four themes of practices: marketing, hotel maintenance, human resources and governmental assistance. The findings illustrate which practices managers consider important and which practices managers actually use during a crisis. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and management of crises.

The literature on crisis management in the hospitality industry has gone through significant developments in recent years. This was done due to the unfortunate circumstances in which many countries experienced different crisis situations. For example, September 11, 2001 marked a significant change in the impact of terror on the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. Subsequent terror events in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East also demonstrated the massive threat of terror. This paper investigates cases in which terror events lead to a downturn in consumption and travel which, in turn, result in a crisis in the hospitality industry. These crises follow the mechanism presented by Kovoor-Misra et al. (2001). It should be mentioned that these crises are often prolonged and overlap because, in some cases, a new terror event may start another cycle of crisis even before the previous crisis has come to an end. The research of crisis management in the hospitality industry has generally included studies that described different occurrences of terror (Aziz, 1995, Pizam and Mansfeld, 1996 and Leslie, 1996), classification of violent activities relevant to the industry (Pizam, 1999 and Faulkner and Russell, 2000), the political and economic benefit associated with cessation of terror activities (Anson, 1999 and Butler and Baum, 1999), prescriptions for preparing for future crisis situations or reacting to past crisis events (Sönmez et al., 1999, Cohn, 2001 and Lynch, 2004) and recommendations for improving organizational actions and processes during or after crisis situations (Blackman and Ritchie, 2008). The focus of this study is on crisis situation that follows the crisis definition offered by Sönmez et al. (1994) which defines a tourism crisis as a situation that can threaten the normal operation of a tourism-related business or damage a tourism destination's reputation. Only a small number of studies have focused on the hotel manager as a unit of analysis and investigated his day to day combat with crisis situations in his business. One of the studies that evaluated what managers do during or immediately after a terror-triggered crisis was conducted by Israeli and Reichel (2003). The authors constructed a list of crisis management practice, evaluated the importance managers assign to each practice and also the level to which managers use each practice. This study is a replication of Israeli and Reichel's (2003) study of Israeli hotel managers to the India luxury hotel industry, using the same conceptual framework and the same methodology. The aim of this paper is to focus is on managers’ micro- and macro-level actions during or shortly after a crisis in order to evaluate if managers know what practices they have to use in times of crisis and if they act accordingly. The objective is to evaluate managers’ beliefs (importance) and actions and to test the consistency of practices’ importance and performance, and to evaluate how managers group the different practices (from different themes) to form their crisis management beliefs and actions. This study also marks one of the first attempts to research crisis management of hotel managers in India. The analysis is of prime importance, because a number of indicators suggest that India is potentially the next large emerging tourism-generating country after China (According to a 2008 report from the Tourism Satellite Accounting [TSA] of the World Travel & Tourism Council [WTTC]). Travel and tourism is a high-growth industry, forecast to increase its total economic activity by 4% worldwide in real terms over the next 10 years (WTTC, 2008). In India, the travel and tourism economy is expected to grow by 7.6% per annum in real terms between 2009 and 2018. According to ACNielson ORG-MARG (2008) report, the hotel industry in India is experiencing rapid growth, particularly in the luxury hotels category. Several international hotel chains such as Six Continents, Carlson Hospitality and Marriott are looking to increase their number of rooms in India. Other chains including Sheraton, Le Meridien and Westin and Accor have a presence in the country, not to mention local chains such as Oberoi, Taj and Jaypee Hotels. The report further suggests that in 2010, 62% of the demand would be in classified according to quality themes and 53% of the total classified demand would be in the Luxury category. The Luxury category according to the Indian Ministry of Tourism includes 5-star deluxe, 5- and 4-star hotels and Heritage Hotels (ACNielson ORG-MARG, 2008). Such promising growth and earnings from national and international tourism faces threats from terrorism, which has been seriously impacting the tourism industry worldwide. The examples of the 9/11 attack in the USA, Bali bombing in Indonesia, attacks on tourists in Egypt and the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 26/11 on luxury hotels generated international attention and served as a poignant reminder of the impact terror can have on the tourism and hotel industry.

The findings of this paper provide an opportunity to evaluate what managers do during and immediately after a crisis. However, this analysis has some limitations, because the findings from the sample population (managers of luxury hotels in New Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai) cannot be generalized to the population of hotel managers in India. Therefore, future research should continue to replicate the analysis in different locations in an effort to achieve robustness. Replication is important, as one question that deserves more attention in future research regards the importance manager's assign to different practices and themes. It should be noted that the list of practices may require additional modifications. Israeli, 2007a and Israeli, 2007b and Perl and Israeli (2010) researched crisis management practices in the restaurant industry and in the travel agency industry. Their studies employed an industry-specific modified list of practices. One modification included an element of communication by including a practice of communicating business as usual. Communication is a crucial element in times of crisis, and future research will evaluate its importance in the hotel industry. Future studies will offer a comparison of crisis management in different locations and different industries to improve our knowledge in crisis management. It is important to find the common themes in crisis management and also to identify the industry- or location-specific themes. The objective was to evaluate managers’ beliefs (importance) and actions and to test the consistency between the importance and usage (performance) of practices, and to evaluate how managers group the different practices (from the different themes) to form their crisis management beliefs and actions. The findings from the correlation between importance and usage suggest that managers are overall consistent and that they use practices they perceive as important. Examining the factors of importance, usage and weighted usage indicates that, essentially, the study's initial crisis management themes received very little support. The findings suggest that crisis management in the Indian luxury hotel sector focuses on managerial actions revolving around the logic of cost cutting and efficiency instead of marketing, maintenance, human resources and governmental assistance. It is interesting to note that managers grouped practices in a manner consistent primarily with cost cutting, suggesting that their main focus is on efficiency. This finding relates to two common terms in management: effectiveness and efficiency. Robbins and Coulter (2003) suggested that managers should focus on effective and efficient completion of organizational work activities. In service industries, and specifically in hospitality, effectiveness and efficiency rely on a subjective element of assessment, which is often done by the customer. Effectiveness is generally described as “doing the right thing”, and it focuses on the ends, or the attainment of the organization's most basic and significant goals. Effectiveness measurements cover a broad range of issues associated with the extent to which a service organization achieves its goals. Specifically, it is a measure of both outcomes and outputs (DeFuria and Shimshak, 1988). Efficiency is generally described as “doing things right”. It is defined as getting the most output from the least amount of inputs, and the measurement is generally done using a ratio of inputs to outputs. Efficiency is an important managerial requirement, primarily because inputs are scarce (Mehrez et al., 2001). The ideal condition is that managers be both effective and efficient ( Phillips, 1999, Brown and McDonnell, 1995 and Kaplan and Norton, 1992). Unfortunately, this is not the common case ( Israeli, 2007a, Israeli, 2007b and Israeli et al., 2006). Some managers are effective, but not efficient; others may demonstrate limited effectiveness with high efficiency. The worst type of manager is both ineffective and inefficient. In our case, the findings suggest that in crisis management, gaps exist between the importance managers assign to practice and their implementation of these practices. When evaluating the importance of practices, managers focus on government support and on marketing. Their responses suggest that their main focus is on finding actions to combat the effects of the crisis by improving their organizations’ effectiveness. Government support and marketing efforts are clearly measures to improve effectiveness, because they can assist in increasing the volume of potential business transactions in the long run and therefore support the attainment of the organization's most basic and significant goals. However, the evaluation of the usage of practices suggests that managers’ actions are different. Their activities focus on cost cutting. Cost cutting is clearly a measure of efficiency and not effectiveness. This finding suggests that managers may have ideas for crisis management. Their crisis management philosophies include measures for improving the long-term effectiveness of the organization. However, the results show that these important activities, which are aimed at improving organizational effectiveness, may be postponed during times of crisis, with attention shifting to improving efficiency. Since this paper replicates a previous study of the Israeli hotel industry (Israeli and Reichel, 2003), it is interesting to compare the findings regarding the Indian industry to the Israeli industry. In terms of the importance of practices, both Israeli and Indian managers identified practices 19, 20 and 21 in the first factor of importance. These are government practices of demand for government assistance with expenses and taxes. This finding suggests that in times of crisis, and when the crisis is external and imposed on the industry, managers seek government assistance to bail out the industry. With respect to practice usage, Indian managers report that practices 19, 20 and 21 are included in the first factor (and also being used), while Israeli managers use these practices, but only in the second factor. These differences may be due to the fact that Indian managers are not used to crises of this magnitude and are preoccupied with the need to improve efficiency and cash flow. Israeli managers, in contrast, resort to other actions before they seek specific government support with expenses and taxes. The product of importance and usage demonstrates again that both Indian and Israeli managers assign importance and even use the support of their government. Another similarity can be seen in practices 14, 15 and 16. These are practices of maintenance cost cutting. These practices are included in the second factor of product of importance and usage both for Israeli and for Indian managers. This similarity suggests that there is an increased motivation to improve efficiency in time of crisis. Improving efficiency should be an ongoing effort in organization regardless of the times, but as Israeli, 2007a and Israeli, 2007b demonstrated, this effort is strengthened in times of crisis. The lack of government support (or a governmental plan for crisis management) and the focus on practices of efficiency raises questions about the ability to improve or secure organizational effectiveness in times of crisis. The Indian tourism and hotel industry had been enjoying a period of rapid growth, until the terror attacks in Mumbai involving two luxury hotels (November 26, 2008). The attacks brought down hotel occupancy to 30% for several weeks. Charter tours were canceled in South India, although it is more than 2000 km away from Mumbai, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars for tourism, hotel and related industries. Round-the-clock media coverage of the attacks added to the negative publicity worldwide. The incident proved that Indian Hotels were not prepared to handle such a crisis. The Israeli hotel industry has also had it share of crisis events and the far-reaching implications of these crises lead to a downturn in the flow on incoming tourism and an increased reliance on domestic tourism. Given the lack of a comprehensive action plan to respond to such a situation in India (as was found by this study and during discussions with some senior managers) and in Israel (Israeli and Reichel, 2003), one theme that becomes a common practice when revenue generation is lost is cost cutting. Since the cost of labor is relatively low in India, it is noted that reducing staff or laying off employees may not be the most favored action. This study provides an opportunity to assess managers’ perceptions and actions of crisis management in India's luxury hotels. The common theme, which is also shared in the Israeli industry, suggests that the government is an important element in crisis management. This is especially true in cases where the crisis is imposed by external factors. The finding suggests that industry managers and their government must develop an action plan with their own respective governments for effectively dealing with future crisis situations. In the absence of a comprehensive crisis management plan, managers can only try to be more efficient, and they may neglect practices of improving their organizational effectiveness