Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Interpretations to Dimensions of Practice Combined
Importance and Usage
The results of factor analysis conducted on weighted usage reflect higher construct
validity. The inclusion of practices in each factor is much more easily understood
and gives much more credence to Proposition 2.
Factor 1, titled “organized industry-wide effort,” included all of the practices of
the 
government
category: practice 19: Industry-wide demand for governmental
assistance with current expenses; practice 21: Industry-wide demand for a grace
period on local tax (municipality) payments; practice 20: Industry-wide demand
for a grace period on tax payments; and practice 18: Organized protest against the
lack of government support; plus practice 13: Marketing to new segments (such as
the ultraorthodox), from the 
marketing
category. As mentioned earlier, the addition
of the marketing practice here may reflect the Israeli hospitality industry’s custom
of sharing governmental resources for marketing campaigns. It should be noted
that one of the most recent tactics of the Israel Ministry of Tourism, in collabora-
tion with the Israel Hotel Association, was to convince both ultraorthodox Jews
and devoted Southern Baptists in the United States to visit Israel, in spite of the
unpleasant and distressing situation.
Factor 2 of weighted usage, titled “maintenance and cost cuts,” falls within the
domain of 
maintenance
. The factor includes the following practices: practice 16:
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Cost cuts by postponing maintenance to the engineering systems; practice 15: Cost
cuts by postponing maintenance of the building (cosmetics); and practice 14: Cost
cuts by limiting hotel services. Apparently, the issue of extending credit and post-
poning payments is not necessarily an integral part of this domain, and conse-
quently is not included in this factor.
While factors 3 and 4 of weighted usage, titled “marketing” and “reducing
price,” respectively, fall strictly within the 
marketing
category, they represent two
different aspects of marketing. Factor 3 included practice 8: Marketing to domes-
tic tourists with focus on specific attributes of the location; practice 7: Marketing
to domestic tourists in joint campaigns with local merchants (such as Visa,
MasterCard); and practice 11: Marketing to foreign tourists with specific focus on
the location’s distinctive features and relative safety. This factor consists of mar-
keting to either domestic or foreign tourists with an emphasis upon unique fea-
tures; specific attributes of the location (or destination), distinctive features and
relative safety, and joint campaigns with local merchants. The fourth factor, on the
other hand, deals with pricing issues of marketing and includes practice 9: Price
drop on special offers; and practice 10: Reducing list price.
Examining the four factors of weighted usage indicates that in essence, the
study’s initial crisis management categories are supported to a large degree. It is
interesting, however, that 
human resource
practices were not included either as a
unique factor or within the four factors extracted.
At this point there seem to be three major options for future utilization of the
hospitality crisis management questionnaire developed in this study: a) using the
original 21-item questionnaire with the four categories (
human resources, market-
ing, maintenance,
and 
government
). This will enable future verification of the cur-
rent study results. b) Utilizing two different questionnaires, one that includes
practices that appear in the four factors of importance and a second one compris-
ing practices included in the four factors of usage. This construct of two question-
naires is not synchronized in terms of the ability to multiply practice importance
with its corresponding usage. Therefore, the weighted grade may not be available
for all practices. Finally, c) use the condensed 13-item weighted usage
question naire. Utilizing either the complete 21-item questionnaire or the con-
densed 13-item weighted usage questionnaire will allow us to employ the additive
function and to calculate a certain grade for crisis management practices.