The Integrated Crisis Management Model for the Hotel Industry: Lowering Crisis Susceptibility and Strengthening Stakeholder Relationship Management

This research paper focuses on crisis management processes within the hotel industry – an industry which still seems reluctant in implementing profound and structured crisis management concepts. Responses to crisis situations are mostly intuitive and ad-hoc. In times of high competition in almost all destinations, categories and conceptions no opportunity of convincing guests as well as all other stakeholders of a trustworthy management shall be missed in order to gain competitive advantage. Each corporate crisis affects several or all stakeholder groups of the organisation – to a varying extent. Stakeholders might either affect or be affected by the hotel organisation and the respective crisis management processes. Taking the manifold opportunities for co-operation of a hotel organisation and its respective stakeholder groups into consideration, an integrated crisis management model for the hotel industry is evolved based both on theoretical foundations and empirical findings from the analysis of expert interviews as well as stakeholder surveys. The model neutralizes the deficits and discrepancies revealed between general crisis management literature and status quo respectively specific prerequisites for the hotel industry.