Literature Review
In this section of the study, the author will form a critical review of the existing literature. The literature review is useful to assist in the comprehension of the theories used and the analysis of the impact of crisis management on five-star hotels in Antalya. As Webster et al, (2002), a defined literature review is a prior review; relevant literature is a core aspect of an academic project. An adequate review can create a foundation and advance of knowledge. It contains information, theory development and evidence written from particular perspectives and points to fulfil certain aims and objectives of the study and how it will be investigated evaluated in relation to the research that’s proposed (Webster et al. 2002). By using the literature review, it allows the author to make reasonable judgements about the work and organise ideas and findings of value into a review (Saunders et al. 2012). In addition, the literature review will develop in the methodology chapter by implementing the research methods which are most appropriate for the current study. Throughout the analysis of the literature review, it allows the author to understand the theories, which will lead to the development of interview questions, questionnaires and surveys. Last but not least, findings from the study will also be analysed and compared to the existing literature to find out the differences in the research.
For the Turkish economy, tourism is an important sector and is one of its fastest-growing markets. The 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 the tourism industry and those kind of attacks are most commonly motivated by religious, political, social objectives, and the infamous publicity that they gain through such actions. In situations like these, it is required for hotels to have strategies for crisis management in place for dealing with incidents related to terrorist attacks. The crisis that arises from a situation of high tension that is unpredictable and unexpected should be promptly responded to as it threatens the aims, present values and assumptions of organisations by making adaptions and understanding mechanisms to be incompatible. The crisis which the hospitality industry is exposed to both comes internally and externally. Incidents of terrorist attacks are regarded as situations of crisis that arise externally due to the actions of terrorists (Campos et al. 2015).
Impact of Terrorism on Tourism Industry in Antalya
Situational crisis communication theory by Timothy Coombs is relevant to understanding crisis management. The main point of crisis communication theory is the idea of crisis responsibility. How your stakeholders perceive your organisation as being responsible or not responsible for the crisis (Holdworth, 2014). Attribution theory comes from crisis communication theory, which states that, contrary events that inflict on stakeholders to make attribution regarding crisis responsibility, its effect on how stakeholders interact with the organisation. Attribution theory says that people often look to find causes and troubles, or make attributions for different events that seem to be adverse or unexpected (Holdworth, 2014). This is relevant to the hospitality industry where the indulgence level is high, ?therefore the disappointment level is high when the expected experience does not occur, and consumers want to find or attribute blame. This also will help the author’s interview process with the owner of Belconti Resort questions about how the stakeholder’s perceived value of safety and security is, within the organisation.
Coombs suggested three groups of crises to support the crisis assessment.
- Victim-Low responsibility and minor reputation threat. The organisation is a victim of a crisis such as natural disasters and rumours (Holdworth, 2014).
- Accident- minimum responsibility and common reputation threat. Other factors are contributed to it and it can be a small issue such as weather (Holdworth, 2014).
- Intentional- Great Responsibility and major reputation threat. The organisation is entirely responsible for the major crisis (Holdworth, 2014).
Situational Crisis Communication
(Source: Ma and Zhen 2016, p.109)
Coombs also introduces two phases in his theory. He states that the effectiveness and the crisis response are also influenced by how an organisation managed the pre-crisis phase, which means prevention and preparation before the crisis. Post-Crisis phase means learning from the mistakes and successes (Holdworth, 2014). In addition, Coombs has recognised three crisis clusters. First one is victim cluster and organisation itself is the victim of the crisis; therefore, it will lead to the mild reputational threat. Natural disaster, rumour, workplace violence and product tampering can lead to the victim cluster of the organisation. In addition, accidental cluster, the organisation leads to the crisis that is unintentional. Accidental cluster attributes towards crisis response that leads to the moderate threat. Challenges of the accidental cluster are associated with the stakeholders and the stakeholders can face the issue of technological-error accidents and technical-error product harm. Intentional cluster occurs when the organisation knowingly placed people at risk, took inappropriate actions of the regulations and laws (Ma and Zhan, 2016). This intentional crisis cluster can lead to the severe reputational threat and human-error product harm causes the product and service to be recalled. As stated by Liu and Fraustino (2014), crisis response strategies have the three groups and these are denying, rebuild and diminish. It can be deduced from the theory that in the wake of the unexpected disaster; the hotel management needs to communicate with the stakeholders in real-time that must be responsive communication. The hotels can do the contingency planning as the executives can create the social media crisis policy to track the response time and mitigate the negative influence of the hotels. In global hospitality industry; the threat of terrorism is sombre in the global travel industry and in Europeans claim to have the change their plans due to the crisis created by the terrorism. The management can manage the social media presence when the hotels lose the brand inconsistency and they face the potential damage to the hotels’ reputation.
Understanding Crisis Management: Situational Crisis Communication Theory
Contingency theory contends that there is one best way of organising and that an organisational style that is effective and successful in some situations may not be successful in others (Fiedler, 1964). In other words, the organisational style is depending on both different internal and external limitations.
Contingency theory was found by Arbete 1958 (Fiefler, 1964) and he has tried to formulate broad generalisation about the formula structures that are associated with or the best one that fits in specific strategies. The organisations can take the contingency approaches that need management to satisfy and balance the internal needs. The internal needs are to adopt the environmental circumstances as it is one of the best ways to organise. Therefore, the appropriate form is depended on the types of task or environment to which the organisation has to deal. Different types of organisations are required in various types of environments (Steinbach et al. 2017). Therefore, the management has to focus on the leadership of the organisation and this model contains the relationship between the favourableness and leadership. As argued by Alexander (2017), the ultimate way to organise is to depend on the nature of the environment to which the firm must relate. Therefore, the hotels and hospitality sector can manage the crisis to do the follow-up with the official response. The management of the hospitality sector waits until the main crisis subsidises and the PR team crafts the official hotel for the response to the situation.
You must first satisfy and balance the internal need of an organisation, and to adapt to environmental circumstances. Different types of organisations are needed in different types of environments. This theory is beneficial as different terrorist attacks occur in different countries and the effects of the crisis on the hospitality organisations are different depending on organisations size, reputation, market share and stakeholders etc. This theory will help the researcher to use the best approach that best fits that specific organisation to learn how the organisation is responding to the crisis. It can be deduced that contingency planning and crisis management are main two big elements of the business continuity which enables the organisation to recover from the disaster. The hotels keep the contingency planning as it is the process of potential risks to the business and they can develop the comprehensive plan which enables the business to respond the threat. Therefore, the researchers stated that contingency planning is the proactive strategy which emphasises the over responsiveness. For the hotel management, the crisis management is the method of controlling the response to the major accident after the mishap occurs. On the other side, the reactive strategy puts stress on the response over the preparation.
Contingency Theory and Crisis Management
Everett Rogers develops diffusion of innovation theory. The theory describes how innovation is communicated and informed through specific channels over a time period. Diffusion of innovation occurs when an individual comes up with a new idea and shares it with others (Rogers, 1995).
This theory will help the researchers’ questionnaires and collect the primary source about how the organisation’s communication style works, in case of crisis. Diffusion innovation concept ends with the thinking that people are the part of the social system which adopts the new product, behaviour and idea. Adoption means that the individuals do something different which they have done in a different way. The strategy of adoption is that the persons must get the idea or behaviour in an innovative way and it proves that the diffusion is possible (Zhang et al. 2015). When the organisation promotes the innovation; there are various stages to appeal to the different adopter sections; innovator, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. The organisations can opt to take the innovation with five main factors after the crisis; the first one is the relative advantage as this is the degree to which the innovation can be achieved. Compatibility of the organisations is associated with the consistent innovation. Complexity is the level how complex or difficult is the innovation. In addition, variability is the level to which the innovation can be tested. Observability is the extent to which the innovation can provide tangible results. Therefore, it can be stated that diffusion of innovation can relate the different ways in which fields and culture are highly subjective. The hospitality sector can use the communication channels through which the messages go through from the hotels to the stakeholders. Marketers in the hospitality sector are interested in the diffusion process as it goes the success and failure of a new product introduced to the market. The hospitality sector looks forward to procuring the largest amount of adoption in the shortest period of time. It is very significant for the marketer to make out the diffusion process so that it can ensure the proper management to spread of the new service of the hospitality sector.
Crisis management is the division of crisis management strategies into different phases that has led to the creation of staged crisis management models. The research prospects that have been carried out in relation to crisis management by the hospitality industries in Istanbul has been doubled as in recent history, they have experienced many situations of crisis. There are certain limitations which must be taken into consideration in relation to research carried out in that the interviewed managers could only give limited information about the operational position in Istanbul. Extant literature review on tourism crisis management is identified in terms of two strands. The first being a tendency to explore the nature of tourism crisis from the buyers and consumers perspective. 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 (Çakar 2018).
Diffusion of Innovation Theory and Crisis Communication in the Hospitality Sector
The graph below shows the rise in the number of terrorist attacks that have occurred in Turkey in recent years along with the number of fatalities which are considerably high.
People killed in Turkey due to terrorism every year:
(Source: datagraver.com 2018)
Issues prevailing in the tourism industry of Turkey are exacerbated by a wave of terrorist attacks in 2016 which include assaults on the Ataturk International Airport and Istanbul. Due to such terrorist attacks, it has significantly lowered the investments in the tourism sector of the country which hence, has slowed down the industry. The gradual decrease of tourists coming to the country has forced hotels to reduce their prices which have to lead to less revenue and income.
The downfall in tourist arrival:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
Antalya is one of the most successful seaside resort tourism areas of south-western Turkey. However, due to the continuous terrorist attacks, hotels and resorts have witnessed their biggest slump in visitors for decades. This has lowered the occupancy rates of hotels and has left guests unsatisfied. Such dissatisfaction also pertains to the ineffective crisis management strategies for handling the situations of crisis during the time of the terrorist attacks and also in the aftermath.
A 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). In various segments of hotels, there were diversified impacts and with the effect of a decrease in the occupancy rates, luxury hotels have gotten the hardest blow.
Most attacked countries of the world:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
The development in the field of crisis management has received great contributions from early examples of models in staged crisis management. However, such stage models tend to view the lifetime of each crisis as finite and linear. This shortcoming of the staged model has led to the induction of the cyclical approach to this type of crisis. The strategic approach to crisis management views a crisis as a cyclical process that initiates and terminates with the default stage being monitoring and collecting intelligence. Careful external and internal monitoring of the strategic approach to the crisis is intended to discover a probable crisis in its early stages. The post-crisis stage is taken into consideration using the approach that focuses on post hoc evaluation by incorporating them into the plan for future use. A strategic approach is regarded as a new trend in crisis management that divides crisis management into five stages (Brondoni 2016). In the first stage, signals have detected that lead to the identification of signs of new crisis warnings and acting in order to prevent the crisis. In the second stage, organisations such as five-star hotels search for crisis risk factors which aim for prevention and probing so that in the occurrence of an attack, the potential harm it will bring will be reduced. The third stage is relating to damage containment, where members of hotels take efforts to prevent damage from spreading into uncontaminated environments and other parts of the organisation when the crisis hits. The fourth stage relates to recovery; when hotel business returns back to normal operations and the last stage is being informed critiques and reviews of their efforts in managing the crisis and thereby adding to the memory of organisation (K?l?çlar et al. 2017).
Strategies in Responding to Crisis Management
A number of foreign visitors in Turkey:
(Source: ourworldindata.org 2018)
The above graph depicts that there has been a fall in the total number of tourists visiting due to an increase in terrorist attacks. It can be seen that there is a wide jump in the number of visitors in the year between 2014 to 2016.
An integrated approach to crisis communication – This particular model of crisis management consists of five interrelated layers that depict strategies to cope 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 the societal context of the crisis. The meso-environment is set in the middle of the two layers regarding the network of crisis management and level of response to the organisation as well as the key stakeholders including their reactions and perceptions. The innermost layers have a micro approach that involves crisis communication teams and communication departments. Other layers describe the activities of crisis communication in response to the challenges faced by hotels in the event of terrorist attacks and depict how such challenge can be met by public authorities in these situations (Webster et al. 2017).
The first layer has the crisis context that is based on the crisis life-cycle perspective that embraces the pre and post-crisis phase and thus incorporates an integrated view where terrorism is seen as both, risk and crisis. Psychological impacts are caused by the intentional harm that is targeted towards the innocent and affects their values and feelings and this creates a sense of need (Erepository.uonbi.ac.ke 2018).
Communication and crisis management activities are viewed as ongoing processes. The second layer starts in response to terrorism crisis and attack in the pre and post-crisis phases. It is an approach for bridging the challenges posed by the crisis of a terrorist attack (Brossman 2016). Activities and tasks of crisis communication take different forms of network interactions between stakeholders and organisation. Citizens, network, and media organisations are the main group of stakeholders that are affected by such activities.
The third layer focuses on the responses and perceptions of the public which emerges and interacts in response to the contextual and other crisis-related factors. The public response to the terrorist attack on the five-star hotels in Turkey is described with the help of this particular layer. There can be the intentional and unintentional spreading of misinformation and they can also be easily created in the situation through which a lack of information and uncertainty is present. All such factors are considered in this layer. The fourth layer is referred to as the ongoing crisis communication activities and deals with the collection of data from the environment. This forms an integral part of the communication approach and overall crisis management (Metodijeski and Filiposki 2017). In the final layer, the grass root level of communication which is described is referred to as the strategy of making communication which is the core aspect of the model. Continuous input is required in the communication strategy through monitoring crisis activities, responses, and perceptions of the customers and context-specific demands.
The critical factor for the effective management of a crisis is providing information to organisations in a time of crisis. This particular theory intends to address the level of command that makes up communication within organisation and intricacies of the information network. Organisations experiencing a crisis are able to identify the flow of information as networks that are made up of links and members. As stated by Parsons (2017), systems have some property of order and these are interdependent parts. Systems tend towards the self-maintaining equilibrium and order. Therefore, the system may be the static or involved in the ordered process of change. The nature of one part of the system that provides the impact on the form that other part takes. Moreover, systems maintain the boundaries within their environments. The hospitality sector needs to look at the customers and the stakeholders through macro-level orientation which is the really broad focus on the social structure. The focus of the hospitality industry deals with social functions and social structures where the crisis’ elements and the functional elements can work together.
In this section of the study; theoretical standpoint of the crisis management has been defined regarding the social factors like the terrorist attack on the hospitality sectors and tourism in Turkey. This section defines the theoretical perspectives of the crisis management in the social aspects and the secondary data defined the theories and models. In addition, terrorism led to drop in the occupancy level in hotels and drop of visits of the tourists in Europe has shown from the perspective of the terrorism. Crisis management theories have been tried to focus on making the crisis management framework in the hospitality industry.
References
Alexander, E., 2017. After rationality: Towards a contingency theory for planning. In Explorations in planning theory (pp. 45-64). Abingdon: Routledge.
Liu, B.F. and Fraustino, J.D., 2014. Beyond image repair: Suggestions for crisis communication theory development. Public Relations Review, 40(3), pp.543-546.
Ma, L. and Zhan, M., 2016. Effects of attributed responsibility and response strategies on organizational reputation: A meta-analysis of situational crisis communication theory research. Journal of Public Relations Research, 28(2), pp.102-119.
Parsons, T., 2017. The present status of “structural-functional” theory in sociology. In The idea of social structure (pp. 67-84). Abingdon: Routledge.
Steinbach, A.L., Holcomb, T.R., Holmes, R.M., Devers, C.E. and Cannella, A.A., 2017. Top management team incentive heterogeneity, strategic investment behavior, and performance: A contingency theory of incentive alignment. Strategic Management Journal, 38(8), pp.1701-1720.
Zhang, X., Yu, P., Yan, J. and Spil, I.T.A., 2015. Using diffusion of innovation theory to understand the factors impacting patient acceptance and use of consumer e-health innovations: a case study in a primary care clinic. BMC health services research, 15(1), p.71.
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