Managing Egyptian Five-Star Hotels during Times of Crises

Abstract

Purpose– The hospitality industry is facing different types of crises resulting from both naturally occurring disasters, and man-made ones such as earthquakes and terrorism. In the case of the Egyptian hotel operations, Crises present extraordinary conditions needing more than working to decrease the negative effects of crises through prompt decisions, but also further efforts including pre-crises as well as post-crises planning to minimize non-desired influences and maximize the benefits of the situation. Crisis management strategies are developed and implemented to make sure that the hotel operation survives the process of crisis. The hotel operation may need a thorough rehabilitation after recovery from a crisis. So that, the study will concentrate on the strategies of crises management through three axes each one of them represents one stage of the strategic approach of crises management. The strategic approach of crisis management includes three steps that start with the pre-crisis stage to develop a plan for potential crises. The second step will be the implementation of the prepared plans and scenarios during the crisis, and the last one will be for the rehabilitation and restructuring after recovery of the crisis without decreasing or minimizing in hotel's quality standardization. Design/methodology/approach–Questionnaires for the top management and staff will be used in this research in order to gain the desired data about the strategic crisis management process. The collected data will be statistically analyzed by using different measures including descriptive ones, such as frequencies, Mean, and standard deviation as well as cross tab. Research limitations/implications - the researcher preferred to focus on the most successful modern strategies in the face of crises agreed by the researcher. It can be applied to the current study community, which is as follows: - (changing path strategy) - (crises fragmentation strategy) - (containment crisis strategy) - (exhausting crisis strategy) - (reserve mobilization strategy) The questionnaire was designed to capture information about the research to meet the needed objectives. Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each question on four choice Likert-scale metric. Keywords : Crisis Management, Egyptian Hotels, Hotel Crisis Plan, Hotels' Services and Product.