information to reach its promised potential. While perfect information may be elusive
even under the best of conditions, disasters will prove the undoing of any model that
requires perfection for proper decisions. Seventh conclusion: In a disaster, you will be
on your own for some time. Eighth conclusion: Stick to the emergency plan. Making
spontaneous decisions under stress and without perfect information will lead to an
unrecoverable situation.
Recovery
Surviving disaster requires a good plan and a good team. Recovery involves a good
deal of hard work and many difficult decisions. Recovery involves all efforts from the
end of the post-emergency period until the reestablishment of the previous trend line.
Recovery is the return to normalized business operation, ante-disaster (Eisendrath et al.,
2008). A complete return to ante-disaster is an unreasonable expectation. For instance,
when room occupancy returns to the pre-disaster levels, then the recovery period has
ended. Any efforts to increase occupancy or ADR at this point would fall back under
the strategic and/or marketing plan of the enterprise.
Management and organization
The contingency model of management is the one most commonly encountered in
modern business. The major approach of this model is that there really is no set or
constant best operational or organizational model, just the market realities to which
the firm must react. The best way to react to the market, and the larger world, is to
be ultimately flexible, prepared for any contingency. The main issue with this model
is its dependence on perfect information, or at least information that is attainable.
Due to the employment of this model and technological advances, hypercompetition
has ensued.
Hypercompetition describes the modern business environment as one where all
firms seek advantage over rivals, but due to technological advances, the opportunities
are in flux primarily because they are merely temporary (D’Aventi, 1994). Once an
advantage is identified, and exploited by a firm, competitors can copy the advantage
relatively quickly, thereby neutralizing the advantage, and therefore incorporating the
advantage into the normal operating model. For a hotel, an in room television was once
an extra service that would amount to an extra charge for the guest. As the price of
TVs came down, one property offered in room sets as standard, gaining the first mover
advantage. Everyone else followed in their own time, and now in-room TVs are so
standardized that there is no further advantage, but rather, an expectation on the part
of the guest.
While hospitality is regarded as a mature industry, any technological advance that
can either lower a property’s operating cost, or increase its revenue, or both, will be
embraced as quickly as is reasonably possible because the advantage will erode as
competitors catch on and incorporate the advantage. Hypercompetition in essence only
benefits the consumer since the margin for profit erodes quickly. The literature is
unified in mentioning the need to institutionalize any and all knowledge that results
from the experience of disaster. A failure to do so will mean that experiences will rest
with the individual, and will depart when the individual departs. The final lesson is:
Learn the lessons; specifically, institutionalize the knowledge.