Sri Lankan hotels again facing the threat of terrorism
Prior to 9/11, terrorists mainly targeted military and government facilities. However, after drastic improvements in security measures by government authorities, extremist terrorists shifted their attention to hotels, which are viewed as ‘easier-to-hit’ targets. Consequently, the hotel and tourism industry is highly vulnerable in terms of safety and security threats. Unlike most workplaces, a hotel’s working environment requires 24-hour open access every day, multiple entry/exit points, several spaces for public gatherings, indoor/ outdoor car parks plus having to deal with the constantly revolving foot traffic of residents, non-residents and staff.
When acts of terrorism occur in hotels, it triggers a diverse set of spiraling reactions that immediately affect the victims, the destination, the tourism industry, and, by and large, dependent on its size; the entire country…as is now the case in Sri Lanka.
One of the first consequences is the immediate fleeing of tourists resulting in a halt in tourist activities. Coming in the wake of this chaos are cancellations of flight and hotel bookings leading to a drop in tourist demand where this demand shifts to alternate (safer) destinations. The cycle of economic damage goes into freefall as hotel occupancies fall. A reduction in prices to stem the hemorrhage of guests soon follows. Capital expenditure is put on-hold and investments come to a halt. Money has to be found to meet the increasing costs on security and efforts to improve the destination’s image via greater marketing measures. What is clear here is that all of the actions described above are strategies that focus on mitigation and recovery.
During the war on terrorism between 1983 and 2010, Sri Lankan hotels experienced the devastating impact on tourism demand from the frequent and severe terrorist attacks. Those of us who worked in hotels during those turbulent times might well say ‘déjà vu’. Nevertheless, as we took one step forward…only to go back two steps, we implemented a spectrum of response measures to mitigate the vulnerability against different manifestations of the terrorist threat. These measures included prescriptive models outlining how a crisis should be handled based on pre-described standards of operation that blue-printed disaster/crisis management approaches vis-a-vis damage control, crisis communications and image repair among other procedures.
As in the 1980 – 2010 eras, when hotels added luggage security x-ray machines and walkthrough / hand-held metal detectors after certain catastrophic incidents, the first thing that hotels today will need to consider is intensifying security visibility. Hotels already employ security measures such as limiting access to guest room floors. But more stringent procedures are needed, and in the days ahead, we will likely see many security cameras at several hotels and greater monitoring of people who bring large packages to a hotel.
Similar to how the aviation industry has tightened security and its unabated vigilance towards the omnipresent threat of terrorism, we must remember that the likelihood of terrorism in the hospitality industry is now a matter of ‘when’ – not ‘if’.
Be safe.
Shafeek Wahab – Editor, ‘Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Trainer, Ex- Hotelier |
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