Crisis management: a case study of disease outbreak in the Metropark Hotel group

ABSTRACT

With a daily people flow of hundreds and even thousands, the hospitality industry has faced a considerable disease crisis challenge in the past 15 years. Hong Kong China Travel Service Hotels Corporate Limited (HK CTS Hotels) has experienced the impact of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 2003 and Influenza A (H1N1) in 2009. Learning from this, the hotel group has developed its crisis management contingency plan. Despite this, it was again hit by a measles crisis in 2019, renewing the hotel group’s concern with crisis management and image. This case study provides an accurate and contemporary scenario for students to understand the development of a crisis management plan and marketing strategy for hotel image recovery by following the four phases of a crisis management framework.

KEYWORDS:

• Disease outbreak
• contingency plan
• image recovery
• handling guidelines
• guest satisfaction
• crisis management framework

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This case information is provided by Mr. Chiu, the General Manager of Metropark Wanchai (current Kew Green Hotel Wanchai Hong Kong), who assisted HK CTS Hotels to overcome the SARS in 2003 and H1N1 in 2009 crises