Crisis Management

In some cases, hotel and hospitality businesses does not just face problems, but becomes hostage to a crisis situation. It can be caused, both by external circumstances (change in the economic situation in a country, region or city) and internal (inefficient management). Such situations, require clear and quick crisis measures. Understanding the underlying problems is crucial to getting out of the crisis. The primary step in crises management is to diagnose the cause and to develop structured actions to redress the situation. These are some of the important elements to consider:

• Hotel Lifecycle: When something is not working as expected, we must review all the premises developed during its different lifecycle stages, going all the way back to the start of the projet. All erronous asumptions and decisions must be recoçgnised, before we can start to address any situation.
• Knowledge & Skills: Errors stem from lack of knowledge and skills, we must therefore identify and evaluate the team's knowledge and skills, so that we can identify gaps that will need to be corrected.
• Standards & Working Processes: Nothing creates inefficiencies like wrong standards and working procedures. If such situations occur, they must be rectified, otherwise and actions implemented will have less effect.
• Positioning: The most common source for a crisis is incorrect positioning. Incorrect positioning, will make all sales and marketing efforts much more difficult and provide smaller results. 
• Physical Product: Very often the physical product and premises are a mis-match to what the market needs or have not been suited to the needs of its staff and guests. This creates the need to constantly compensate which is always inefficient.
• Market: If we cannot identify our core guests/customers in sufficient volumes, then everything else will be useless, so we must identify who they are, what they need and how to reach them. .