Disaster And Emergency Planning And Preparedness In The Jordanian Hotel Industry
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Date
2016-09
Authors
Albattat, Ahmad Rasmi suleiman
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Abstract
As a year round industry, the hospitality industry is one of the most
vulnerable businesses to disasters and emergencies. Since the last few decades, a
wide range of disasters and emergencies affected the global hospitality industry, and
created harmful impacts on hotels and related hospitality businesses, such as Amman
bombing 2005, Arab spring revolutions, Iraqi war, and heavy snow. However,
disasters and emergencies, to some extent, can be avoided or their impacts can be
mitigated and prevented through practicing effective disaster and emergency
planning and preparedness for disasters. This study attempts to study disaster and
emergency planning and preparedness in the hotel industry in Jordan, to study the
level of readiness for emergency planning in hotel industry in Jordan, and to
investigate factors and barriers of effective disaster and emergency planning in hotel
industry in Jordan. The study employed in-depth interviews of 36 respondents in the
hotel sector. Qualitative research methodologies based on snowball sampling were
conducted. The results show that Jordanian hotel industry was affected by many
devastating emergencies and disasters in the last few decades. It is quite surprising
that in emergency and disaster management, planning and preparedness were totally
or partially overlooked by major players in the industry. The study further shows that
emergency planning for disasters has an infinite role in effective disaster
preparedness and management, and those hotels that prepared well were successful
in managing disasters and emergences. However, the majority of the other rated
hotels were never prepared for disasters and emergencies, and they were not capable
financially and materially toward preparing and training the personnel, and unable to
afford financing activities or disaster and emergency preparedness plans and
programs. It was also discovered that the majority of three and four star hotels were
unprepared for future disasters and emergencies. The findings also conclude that
although emergencies brought about trauma and hardship in hotels, they are at the
same time establishing a re-engineered life-cycle. Hotels in Jordan have manifested
high level of flexibility to the new changes brought about by emergency incidents.
Many disasters and emergency planning and preparedness barriers were identified
such as financial constraints, lack of support, scarcity of personnel, lack of
government support and assistance, lack of information and awareness. The study
suggests that for hotels to be well managed and prepared adequately for emergency,
all stakeholders should engage in removing all setbacks, barriers of effective disaster
and emergency management and planning. It also suggested that Jordanian hotel
managers and stakeholders should establish a well detailed emergency planning and
preparedness schedule and outline details of the collaborative management plan for
emergency cases.
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Keywords
Disaster and emergency planning and preparedness , in the hotel industry in Jordan