Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Concept Definitions
Hospitality crisis
A sharp decline in demand of incoming tourists, due to nega-
tive geopolitical developments and act of terror.
Important crisis management tactics
A means for dealing with the hospitality
crisis that is considered by hotel managers as important. Such tactics may include
special marketing campaign efforts geared toward neglected foreign segments or
toward domestic tourists.
Utilized crisis management tactics
Tactics employed by hotel executives in
order to actually deal with the declining number of guests. The purpose of these
tactics is to control the damages of the crisis by cutting costs on the one hand and
attempting to attract alternative segments on the other hand. The utilized tactics are
expected to correspond to the “important” standard of coherent crisis management.
Coherent crisis management
Defined in this chapter as a high level of com-
patibility between crisis management tactics that were reported as “important” and
tactics reported as “actually utilized.” The rational model of crisis management
assumes a high degree of congruence between importance and usage.
Review Questions
1. Please explain the assumption of the rational coherent model of management tac-
tics. How is this model applied to the crisis management study in Israel?
2. What are the crisis management tactics that were deemed as “important” by hospi-
tality executives?
3. Please explain congruent tactics vs the incongruent tactics in dealing with the hos-
pitality crisis.
4. Can we conclude from this chapter that a high level of congruence between “impor-
tant” and “utilized” crisis management tactics will result in superior performance?
Please explain.
Notes
1
This chapter was previously published as: Israeli, A. A., and Reichel, A. (2003).
Hospitality crisis management practices. International Journal of Hospitality
Management, 22, 353–372.
2
This chapter was supported by the Dean’s Fund for Support of Research at the
School of Management, Ben Gurion University of the Negev and by the Israeli
Hotel Association.
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