Hospitality crisis management in Turkey: a comparative approach

Abstract

Political instability and terror events commonly occur in many countries. Since 2016, Turkey experienced a surge of political crises and terrorist activities which led to a marked decline in the country’s tourism revenue, and, consequently, caused economic struggles. The study employs the Importance-Performance Analysis framework to evaluate the use and the importance that Turkish hotel managers assign to different crisis management practices. The analysis is based on a list of crisis management practices that belong to four categories: human resources, marketing, hotel maintenance, and governmental assistance. The results suggest that Turkish managers follow the main categories in their crisis management action and focus on marketing and cost-cutting practices. Comparison with previous studies in India and Israel highlight the common focus marketing and cost-cutting as significant crisis management practices to improve competitive position and manage crisis situations.