Crisis management is a process in which the crisis indicators are collected and evaluated and where the appropriate steps are taken and enforced to experience a minimal loss in a crisis situation. To accomplish company's goal, long before signs of an imminent crisis, the senior executives of the company must strongly support and engage in crisis management efforts. The key to crisis management for a company is to act proactively and not to be reactive, where proactive means a business is ready to face a crisis even though it is never 100 percent possible to prepare for a crisis because it is an unpredictable event. There are four phases of managing crisis: reduction, readiness, response, and recovery.
1. Reduction
This phase aims to increase the crisis awareness among the organization, identify potential risks, and search a way to minimize the crisis's impact. Â In this phase, hotels must make standard operational procedures (SOP) monitor the perception of crises and reactions on social media. Based on the guest's opinion, hotels could assess the crisis or determine the crisis that needs to be resolved in the hotel. It is critical for hotels to budget and prepare for a social media specialist in the reduction phase, who will handle social media on a daily basis. However, ideally, this person will be part of the hotel crisis management team monitor and respond to the crisis that is going to happen.
2. Readiness
The aim of this phase is to increase the readiness of the organization in facing a crisis. The contingency plans include the establishment of a crisis management plan and preparation of health and safety measures.
3. Response
This phase refers to the activities and movements of organization after a crisis. The appropriateness of the response strategy and pacing are crucial to the success of the response strategy. At this phase, it is important for hotels to allow the social media expert time to track, react and report findings back to management. This specific task needs to be continued until management decides that the crisis no longer needs attention on social media networks.
4. Recovery
This phase stands for the movement of companies to restore regular business. Both business continuity strategies and resource re-allocations are needed as necessary measures, based on the lessons learned from the crisis. The monitoring role of social media in their recovery plans should regularly be discussed by hotels.
