Tourism, Security and Safety From Theory to Practice

Conclusion
The current crisis in the Israeli industry originates from the intensification of ter-
ror activities, and it provides an opportunity to study crises through a case exam-
ple, their impact on the hospitality industry, and the tactics employed for coping
with them. The tool developed and used to study the way hospitality managers
cope with a crisis provides an evaluation of two related factors: first, recognition
of the importance of measures that assist the organization in times of crisis; and
second, the level of usage that managers demonstrate for each of these measures.
Based on a literature review and interviews with experts in the Israeli hospital-
ity industry, four categories of crisis management practices were identified: 
mar-
keting,
infrastructure (or hotel) 
maintenance, human resources,
and 
government
assistance. In each of the categories, practices relevant to the crisis in the Israeli
industry were listed.
The questionnaire was sent out to 328 general managers from all of the hotels
in Israel registered with the Ministry of Tourism. One hundred sixteen usable ques-
tionnaires were returned, constituting a response rate of 35%. There were two lead-
ing propositions to the study. Proposition 1 assumed that there will be a strong
positive correlation between the importance managers assign to a certain practice
and the level of usage of this practice. Proposition 2 assumed that practices can be
grouped together for both importance and usage to the traditional categories found
in the literature (i.e., human resources, marketing, maintenance, and government).
To test Proposition 1, Pearson correlation tests were employed to find the corre-
lation between the level of importance assigned to the practice and the level of
usage of that practice. The correlations were all positive, which suggests that at a
basic level, there is considerable correspondence between practices’ importance
and usage. The practices that received the highest rank on importance/usage were
freezing pay rate from the human resources category (0.74), postponing mainte-
nance from the maintenance category (0.72), reducing list prices (0.70), price drops
and special offers (0.68), and marketing and promotions for new products (0.66).
The results of the factor analysis partially supported Proposition 2. The factors
generated from the importance of crisis management practices were as follows:
reliance on government and marketing, maintenance cost cuts, lowering prices
through labor cutbacks, and finding neglected segments and tightening employ-
ment terms. The results of the factor analysis of usage also partially support
Proposition 2 forming the following factors: cost cutting practices, recruiting
government support, massive marketing and focused marketing, and shorter 
workweek.
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The questionnaire is only the first step in characterizing hospitality crisis man-
agement. It is possible that in different countries there will be a need to add or
delete such practices. For example, the items that deal with central and local gov-
ernmental forms of support may reflect the Israeli norms and past experience 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 coun-
try hospitality executives might turn to the government for support. The case of the
US aviation industry after September 11, 2001, may support this argument.