Alexandros Paraskevas’ study was conducted on a hotel chain that has been operating for over 20 years (at the time of the research) and has 19 properties, 8 five-star city hotels, 11 four and five-star resorts all operating in one Mediterranean country; yet, suddenly faced an unexpected crisis!
The hotel chain has a well-developed contingency plan that gave it “confidence that its brand equity will suffer little damage even at the worst case scenario.” For example, it received the ISO9002, it prepared a detailed crisis management plan (CMP) for almost any possible crisis, the hotel personnel developed an excellent media relations program, etc.
What Happened?
The hotel chain received messages during the weekend (July 2003) that many guests are suffering from food poisoning (foodborne illness) in 6 cities and 7 resort properties. Later, it discovered that the number of cases are increasing rapidly.
Dealing with the Crisis
The crisis management cell (CM) directly met with the CEO in the chain’s headquarters. They agreed on:
- implementing the CMP for major product failure;
- contacting all locally contracted doctors to treat all infected guests;
- hospitalizing patients with severe cases;
- starting preliminary investigations to collect data on symptoms and food consumption histories of infected guests;
- assigning two crisis task force (CTF) teams of executive managers to visit all infected units, deal with the situation on a guest‐to‐guest basis, and deal with key account customers;
- the media relations team ensuring that the crisis will not hit the headlines;
- paying huge amounts of money in compensations to avoid legal action from guests and tour operators.
But little did they know that their last two decisions affected the hotel chain’s reputation!
Investigation Results
- 176 cases of foodborne were investigated with diarrhea and vomiting as main symptoms (along with other symptoms); however, no case required hospitalization;
- according to the lab analyses of all food samples, the cause was identified in the sushi/sashimi section of the buffets of all hotels in the chain within that week (a standard item).
Want to know what happened next? Stay tuned!
Source
Paraskevas, A. (2006). Crisis management or crisis response system? A complexity science approach to organizational crises. Management Decision, 44(7), 892-907. Retrieved from https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/00251740610680587/full/html
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