Crisis Management Strategies in Tourism: Turkey Hotel Sector

This literature review examines crisis management strategies within the tourism industry, focusing on the impact of terrorism in Turkey. It analyzes the effects of terrorist attacks on five-star hotels, including declining occupancy rates and average daily rates. The review discusses various crisis management models, such as staged, strategic, and integrated approaches to crisis communication, emphasizing the importance of proactive planning and adaptation. It highlights the need for hotels in Turkey to develop robust crisis management plans to mitigate the impact of terrorism and ensure long-term survival in a volatile environment. The analysis draws upon various sources to illustrate the challenges and potential solutions for managing crises in the tourism sector.

Running head: INDEPENDENT STUDY
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Tourism and terrorist attack in Turkey:
The overall aim of the literature review presented is to gain a broader understanding
of crisis management strategies in the tourism industry by focusing on terrorism as prevailing
and significant source of crisis. For Turkish economic, tourism is an important sector and
fastest growing market. Total number of foreign tourist visiting Turkey has been increasing
every year (Aissa and Goaied 2016). In the last decades, a series of terrorist attacks have been
witnessed by tourism industry and such attacks are motivated by religious, political and social
objectives and the enormous publicity that they gain by such actions. In such situation, it is
required by hotels to have strategy of crisis management at place for dealing with incidents
related to terrorist attack. The crisis that arises from situation of tension that is unpredictable
and unexpected should be promptly responded as it threatens the aims, present values and
assumptions of organization by making adaption and understanding mechanisms
incompatible. Crisis to which the hospitality industries are exposed are both originated
internally and externally. Incidents of terrorist attacks are regarded as situation of crisis that
arises externally due to the actions of terrorists (Campos et al. 2015).
Background of research:
Research on the impact of terrorist attack on five star hotels of Turkey includes
analysis of literature review in reference to different contexts. Impact of terrorist attack on
Turkey is measured in terms of total number of people who have been killed over the years
and downfall in level of tourist arrival in the country. This particular research paper proceeds
giving the illustration of crisis management strategies model for managing the crisis after
such attacks. It depicts how five star hotels operating in country make use of such models for
mitigating the harm and devastation caused by terrorist attack. The purpose is to identify how
the implementation of such tools helps in minimizing the impact of terrorism. In this regard,

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different theories on crisis management have been explained and how the organization such
as hotels can implement such strategy in minimizing the impact of terrorist attacks.
Crisis management strategies following terrorist related incidents:
One of the important advances in the literature review on tourism industry crisis
management is the division of crisis management strategies into different phase that has led
to creation of staged crisis management models. The research prospects that have been carries
out in relation to the crisis management by the hospitality industries in region of Istanbul has
been doubled as the recent past have experienced many crisis situation. Some limitations that
should be taken into consideration that interviewed managers can give limited information
about the operational position about the entire region of Istanbul. Extant literature review on
tourism crisis management is identified in terms of two strands. A tendency to explore the
tourism crisis nature from the buyers and consumers perspective is represented. This
incorporates how the crisis would impact the perception of tourists and their willingness to
travel. In the second strand, studies of crisis management strategies are discussed in terms of
strategies and methods used by five star hotels to deal with the crisis situation (Çakar 2018).

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Data on terrorist attack on Turkey and its impact on five star hotels:
The terrorism attack on Turkey has been rising in the recent years and the rise in
number of attacks and victims is considerable.
People killed in Turkey due to terrorism every year:
(Source: datagraver.com 2018)
Issues prevailing in the tourism industry of Turkey are exacerbated by wave of terrorist attack
in year 2016 including assaults on city of Ataturk and Istanbul. Such terrorist attack tattled
the confidence of investors in the tourism sector and that resulted in slow down of industry in
Turkey. This is so because due to fall in number of tourists in the country, hoteliers are

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required to slash down the prices and lead to falling revenue and income generation.
Downfall in tourist arrival:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
Antalya is one of the successful seaside resorts of Turkey and due to continued
terrorist attack, resort have witnessed biggest slump in visitors for decades. This has lowered
the occupancy rate of hotels and made guests dissatisfied. Such dissatisfaction also pertains to
the ineffective crisis management strategies for handling the crisis situation due to after effect
and during the time of terrorist attack.

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Number of terrorist attacks on Turkey:
(Source: Çakar 2018)
The upscale and luxury hotels are negatively impacted due to such events in terms of
average daily rates (Bassil et al. 2017). On various segments of hotel, there were diversified
impacts and with effect on the occupancy rate, luxury hotels are the hardest hit. Terrorist
attack resulted in drop in occupancy rate of five star hotels considerably.

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Most attacked countries of the world:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
The development in the field of crisis management has received great contributions
from early explanations of models of staged crisis management. However, such stages model
tends to view the lifetime of each crisis as finite and linear. This shortcoming of the staged
model has led to evolvement of cyclical and continuous approach to crisis. The strategic
approach to crisis management views crisis as cyclical process that initiates and terminates
with the default stage of monitoring and intelligence collecting. Careful external and internal
monitoring of the strategic approach to crisis is intended to discover probable crisis at an
early stage. The post crisis stage is taken into consideration using this approach that focuses
on post hoc evaluation by incorporating them into the plan for future use. Strategic approach
is regarded as new trend in crisis management that divides crisis management into five stages
(Brondoni 2016). In the first stage, signals are detected that leads to the identification of signs
of new crisis warnings and acting upon to make prevention of the crisis. In the second stage,

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organization such as five star hotel search for crisis risk factors for prevention and probing so
that the potential to harm is reduced. The third stage is of damage containment where
members of hotels take efforts to prevent damage from spreading into uncontaminated
environment and other parts of organization when the crisis hits. Forth stage is of recovery
when hotel business returns to normal operations and the last stage is about learning when
members critiques and review their efforts of crisis management and thereby adding to the
memory of organization (Kılıçlar et al. 2017).
Number of foreign visitors in Turkey:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
The above graph depicts that there has been fall in the total number of tourists visiting
due to increase in terrorist attacks. It can be seen that there is a wide jump in number of
visitors in year 2016 as against 2014.

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Integrated approach to crisis communication- This particular model of crisis
management consists of five interrelated layers that depicts strategies to cope up with the
terrorism crisis.
Integrated approach to crisis communication in case of terrorist attack:
(Source: Ottomanjournal.com 2018)
A macro approach is involved in the outer layer that focuses on societal context of
crisis. The meso environment is involved in the two middle layers on the level of network of
crisis management and level of response to organization as well as key stakeholders including
their reactions and perception. The inner most layers have a micro approach that involves
crisis communication team and communication department. Other layer describe the
activities of crisis communication in response to the challenges faced by hotels in event of
terrorist attacks and depicts how such challenge can be met by public authorities in such
situations (Webster et al. 2017).
The first layer has the crisis context that is based on crisis life cycle perspective that
embraces post and pre crisis phase and thus incorporating integrated view where terrorism is

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seen both as risk and crisis. Psychological impacts are caused by the intentional harm that is
targeted towards innocent and affects their values and feelings and this create sense making
needs (Erepository.uonbi.ac.ke 2018).
Communication and crisis management activities are viewed as an ongoing process in
the second layer and that take shape in response to terrorism crisis and attack in the post and
pre crisis phases. It is an approach for bridging the challenges posed by crisis of terrorism
attack (Brossman 2016). Activities and task of crisis communication take different forms of
networked interactions between stakeholders and organization. Citizens, network and media
organizations are the main group of stakeholders that are affected by such activities.
The third layer focuses on responses and perceptions of public that emerges and
interact in response to contextual and other crisis related factors. Responses of public to the
terrorist attack on the five star hotels in Turkey are described with the help of this particular
layer. There can be intentional and unintentional spreading of misinformation and they can
also be easily created in the atmosphere of lack of information and uncertainty. All such
factors are considered in this layer. Forth layer is a part of ongoing crisis communication
activities and deals with collecting of data from environment. This forms an integral part of
communication approach and overall crisis management (Metodijeski and Filiposki 2017). In
the last layer, the grass root level of communication is described that is referred to as strategy
of making communication that is the core of model. Continuous input is required in the
communication strategy by monitoring crisis activities, responses and perceptions of
customers and context specific demands.
Structural functional system theory:
The critical factor for effective management of crisis is providing information to
organization at crisis time. This particular theory intends to address the level of command

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that make up communication within organization and intricacies of information network.
Organization experiencing crisis are able to identify the flow of information as network that
are made up of links and members.
Summary:
From the analysis of literature review regarding the crisis management strategies, it
can be inferred that the uncertainty of terrorism have a considerable impact on international
business. Such impacts are experienced in terms of falling average daily rate and occupancy
rate. However, the branded hotels can retain their clienteles by offerings added value to
customers. The performance can be positively influenced by developing proper way of
coping up with crisis by means of crisis management strategies. In addition to this, the
discussion on literature review has also provided strategic approach and integrated approach
to crisis communications for managing the crisis in the terrorist attack events. Furthermore, it
is of utmost important for five star hotels in Turkey to develop the appropriate crisis
management plan as Turkish have been witnessing increasing terrorist attacks in recent years.
Such practices of crisis management will undoubtedly help hotels to survive and adopt during
crisis. Constant adoption is essential for hotels as they operate in volatile environment.

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References list:
Aissa, S.B. and Goaied, M., 2016. Determinants of Tunisian hotel profitability: The role of
managerial efficiency. Tourism Management, 52, pp.478-487.
Bassil, C., Saleh, A.S. and Anwar, S., 2017. Terrorism and tourism demand: a case study of
Lebanon, Turkey and Israel. Current Issues in Tourism, pp.1-21.
Brondoni, S.M., 2016. Global Tourism and Terrorism. Safety and Security
Management. Symphonya, (2), p.7.
Brossman, C., 2016. Building a travel risk management program: Traveler safety and duty of
care for any organization. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Çakar, K., 2018. Critical success factors for tourist destination governance in times of crisis:
a case study of Antalya, Turkey. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, pp.1-17.
Campos-Soria, J.A., Inchausti-Sintes, F. and Eugenio-Martin, J.L., 2015. Understanding
tourists' economizing strategies during the global economic crisis. Tourism Management, 48,
pp.164-173.
Datagraver. (2018). Terrorism attacks in Turkey 1970-2016 | Datagraver. [online] Available
at: http://www.datagraver.com/case/terrorism-attacks-in-turkey-1970-2016 [Accessed 12
Apr. 2018].
Erepository.uonbi.ac.ke. (2018). [online] Available at:
http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/93822/Omondi_Effect%20Of
%20Terrorism%20On%20Five%20Star%20Hotels%20In%20Nairobi,%20Kenya.pdf?
sequence=3 [Accessed 12 Apr. 2018].
Kılıçlar, A., Uşaklı, A. and Tayfun, A., 2017. Terrorism prevention in tourism destinations:
Security forces vs. civil authority perspectives. Journal of Destination Marketing &
Management.

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Metodijeski, D. and Filiposki, O., 2017. Tourism policy and security: The case of terrorism.
Ottomanjournal.com. (2018). [online] Available at:
http://ottomanjournal.com/issue/2017/article%205-2017-vol.2%20issue%201.pdf [Accessed
12 Apr. 2018].
Our World in Data. (2018). Terrorism. [online] Available at:
https://ourworldindata.org/terrorism [Accessed 16 May 2018].
Webster, C., Ivanov, S., Gavrilina, M., Idzhylova, K. and Sypchenko, L., 2017. Hotel
Industry's Reactions to the Crimea Crisis.