Crisis management and recovery: How Washington, D.C., hotels responded to terrorism [Summary]

Abstract

As the study found out, hospitality industries should prepare a plan against the crisis based on crisis management skills. For hotels, they must prepare a plan for dealing with malevolence-based crises. They need to assess internal conditions including reassuring customers and staff, figuring out additional dangers, executing emergency plans, and protecting the safety of people and hotels at first, and then ask for help from external authorities. After the emergency conditions have been saved, hoteliers must get into the recovery process. Stages for the recovery consist of 4 steps. The first three steps can be done simultaneously - coordinating all tourism stakeholders ’ activities such as establishing the forum for information sharing, engaging the local community to help victims and workers, reassuring stakeholders, and potential visitors from industry level to national level. Finally, the fourth step including funding, developing, and launching a recovery marketing plan should be done after the previous three steps are finished.