Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

participated in the study and for 25 hotels from Tel Aviv. A grade was then pro-
vided for crisis management by employing the additive function: for each hotel we
summed the products of importance and usage grades for each practice. The aver-
age grades and the standard deviations for Eilat and Tel Aviv are also provided in
the table. The annual yield of hotels in the location is provided next, followed by
the average revenue per employee (in New Israeli Shekels).
The findings serve as an example of evaluation crisis management and their
relation to performance. There are only small differences between hotels in Eilat
and Tel Aviv with respect to the importance assigned to crisis management prac-
tices. However, there are significant differences in the level of usage, which is
higher in Tel Aviv than in Eilat. As a result, the average grade given to crisis man-
agement in Tel Aviv is also higher. The data can support a possible argument that
managers in Tel Aviv are better at managing the crisis compared to managers in
Eilat, but this improved performance is derived from usage and not from the recog-
nition of the importance of practices. With respect to performance, hotels in Tel
Aviv outperform hotels in Eilat with respect to both average yield and average rev-
enue per employee. As we mentioned before, we do not know at this time if a
cause-and-effect relationship exists between crisis management and short-term
performance, but we present evidence that could and should direct future research
in this vein.
Table 10
Crisis Management and Performance: Anecdotes from Eilat and Tel Aviv
Eilat Tel 
Aviv
(n = 24)
(n = 25)
Average of importance achievement measure
67%
68%
Standard deviation of importance achievement measure
14%
15%
Average of usage achievement measure
42%
51%
Standard deviation of usage achievement measure
30%
25%
Average value function grade
203
259
Standard deviation of value grade
153
143
Proxy-for-yield (Israeli, 2002)
29%
57%
Average revenues per employee (Central Bureau of Statistics, 2002)
16,702
18,567
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Israeli Hospitality Crisis Management
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The suggested hospitality crisis management practice questionnaire presented
here is only the first step in a series of steps needed to further check its reliability
and validity dimensions. It is quite possible that in different countries there will be
a need to add or delete practices. For example, the items that deal with central and
local governmental forms of support may reflect the Israeli norms and past expe-
rience and might have to be adjusted for different countries. On the other hand, it
may be argued that given the magnitude of the crisis in Israel, in almost every other
country hospitality executives might turn to the government for support. The case
of the US aviation industry after September 11, 2001, may support this argument.