Proactive Crisis Planning: Lessons for the Accommodation Industry

Abstract

Crisis planning is an important strategy in turbulent times, and particularly important for industries such as tourism which may be prone to a range of external and internal risks, crises and disasters. Despite the importance of the accommodation industry to tourism, a lack of research has explored accommodation crisis management. Most of the studies in this industry are concerned with crisis response or recovery rather than proactive crisis planning and follow a descriptive case study research design. A quantitative survey approach was used in this study to evaluate the current level of crisis planning and crisis preparedness within the Australian accommodation industry. This study also examined the relationship between organisational factors (type, size and age), crisis planning and crisis preparedness. In the sample of 386 managers surveyed, three quarters of respondents indicated that their organisations had undertaken crisis planning activities in the past 6 months. This study found strong support for the hypotheses that organisational type and organisation size had an impact on the implementation of crisis planning and the perceived level of crisis preparedness. It also found support for the hypothesis that increasing organisational age was associated with increasing crisis planning implementation; however, increasing age was not associated with increasing crisis preparedness. Data on these relationships were useful in determining which factors influence accommodation crisis planning and offered suggestions for accommodation operators interested in increasing their crisis preparedness.