As an owner, have you ever learned of a hotel crisis when it was too late to do anything but pray? You’re not alone. A 2023 PwC survey found that over 80% of hospitality leaders worry about managing reputational risk in real time, yet fewer than 30% actually have a clear plan ready.
I’ve led hotels through boycotts, bomb threats, blackouts, brand removals, viral reviews, virtue signaling, and high-profile meltdowns. The scenarios change. The pressure doesn’t. What matters is how you prepare your team and your property to face disruption before it defines you. The best crisis playbook starts long before the headlines.
Crisis doesn’t announce itself
Some crises unfold in real time. Others smoulder before they catch. One of the most damaging I’ve seen started with a single negative Reddit post. By the time the story hit other platforms, we were facing a brand-level backlash.
Recovery begins with recognition. The best teams name the problem early. They move fast. They speak clearly. They humanize the response before someone else takes control of the narrative. In one case, a guest posted video of a chaotic check-in to Instagram. It hit 25,000 views overnight. The brand damage wasn’t about the issue – it was about the silence.
Owners can encourage this kind of early transparency. The sooner your team feels safe calling out a storm, the smaller the storm becomes.
Create the culture before needed
Culture is the muscle memory of a hotel. When pressure hits, your team won’t rise to the level of your strategy. They’ll fall to the level of your trust, your habits, and your training.
That’s why humanistic leadership matters. It builds a culture where people can act with care, solve problems in real time, and protect the guest experience when things go off script.
When culture is strong, crisis doesn’t rattle the core. It just raises the volume.
Practice. Then practice again. Make practice part of your team because culture and team are your tools for weathering a crisis. In fact, if a company culture is strong, a crisis or disorientation can be just another day at the office. Within an aligned culture, people instinctively and immediately turn to each other to address a challenge together.
In hospitality, your culture is your credit rating. And the leaders you hire are your risk profile. In a crisis, you’re managing two forms of currency: financial and relational. Lose the second, and the first starts slipping fast. Trust, morale, and clarity aren’t soft values. They’re the glue that holds revenue together when the heat is on. Strong cultural currency lets you move fast, make hard calls, and protect the bottom line. Without it, everything costs more.
When the leader vanishes
Here’s the crisis no one talks about.
A GM resigns unexpectedly. Or they’re dismissed after a misstep. There’s no successor. Suddenly, the most visible person in the building is gone and the shockwaves ripple through every department. Guests notice. Staff falter. Culture gets shaky. The recovery is slow and expensive.
A 2024 SHRM study found that only 21% of hospitality and service organizations have a formal succession plan in place for senior leadership. The average time to hire a new GM in luxury hospitality is now 94 days, not including onboarding. That’s a dangerous gap.
Smart owners don’t wait for that moment. They invest in succession early. They share knowledge, and reward loyalty over convenience. Every leader leaves eventually. What matters is who’s ready next.
Selection is strategy
If crisis tests your team, then hiring builds your defense.
Owners should treat talent selection like an investment. Using expert tools like strength-based search ensures you’re hiring for fit, not just filling a role. You wouldn’t hire a horse to climb a tree. You’d hire a squirrel.
Equally important is onboarding. Don’t hand over the keys and hope. Introduce leaders deliberately. Set expectations. Share values and legacy. A well-prepared leader stabilizes. Drop someone in cold, and you’re adding friction to an already high-pressure role.
Invite ownership to the table early
In most crisis situations, ownership is brought in late; after the spin, after the fallout. That’s a mistake.
In one case, a luxury hotel lost both its GM and director of operations to competitor poaching within weeks. The property was already short-staffed. Because ownership had been looped in early, they could support real-time decisions, communicate with the team, and reposition the brand with minimal noise.
Trust always outpaces damage control. The best recoveries start with transparency. Owners bring perspective. Operators bring real-time clarity. When those align, you don’t just recover, you reposition.
Build for resilience, not just recovery
Resilience isn’t just about generators or cybersecurity. It’s about how your team performs when something goes wrong at 7 a.m. and no one’s picking up the phone.
Before a crisis strikes, smart owners build what I call a bench. It starts with knowing your people; assessing your org chart to see who can step up, cross-training early, staying close enough to understand individual strengths and gaps, and knowing where to turn if you suddenly need external talent. That includes recruiters, freelancers, legal advisors, and emergency vendors. This isn’t theoretical planning. It’s operational insurance.
Do you have communication redundancies? Can the team function without their direct supervisor? If your operation depends on one voice, you’re one decision away from collapse.
And then what happens? In one recent example, a beloved GM gave notice of departure. In the same time frame, his second in command was recruited away. A complete coincidence of unexpected timing. Suddenly, this major hotel found itself with no GM, and no backup. To make things worse, a neighboring top-rated hotel also lost its GM to the temptations of recruitment.
Among hotel groups with revenues over $250 million, 67% report having lost a GM or senior leader without a clear successor and with recovery averaging five to seven months. Smart owners build depth. They keep leaders close to the guest experience and teach junior staff how to lead under pressure.
Turn the curve into a climb
Crisis isn’t just something to survive. It’s a chance to evolve and to rethink how you build loyalty and trust. It’s not about how much we charge. It’s about how we earn the kind of trust that makes people willing to pay for real value.
During the pandemic, we kept employees paid and held firm on pricing when others dropped. We anticipated the return of “revenge travel.” We trained, prepared, and added value without panic. The guests came back, and we were ready. The result? Higher revenue.
Stronger teams. Deeper guest loyalty.
This wasn’t luck. It was strategy.
Every crisis carries the potential for a self-expansion moment. It’s growth under pressure, like carbon into diamonds. The prepared don’t just recover. They accelerate.
This is the new baseline
Protecting what you’ve built should feel personal. A hotel isn’t just an asset, it’s a home. For guests, for your team, for ownership. And in hospitality, you don’t get to sit out the inning. Baseball great Jackie Robinson stole home 19 times, including once in the World Series. That kind of boldness is what this industry demands. Every day, you protect your home. That’s the job. That’s the game.
So, what’s the takeaway? Crisis isn’t a one-time test. It’s a daily measure of your readiness. The hotels that thrive aren’t reacting, they’re preparing. Every day. Every play.
The world isn’t getting easier. Neither is this business. But crisis can be a proving ground as much as a threat. Hotels that plan ahead, hire with care, and lead with clarity will keep rising. Because your best insurance isn’t just capital – it’s culture. And not just strategy, but trust. And when both are in place, crisis becomes just another opportunity to prove what your asset is truly made of.
Contributed by Edward Mady, Edward Mady LLC, Los Angeles. Mady’s hotelier career spans almost four decades across iconic luxury properties, including The Beverly Hills Hotel and Hotel Bel-Air. His upcoming book, Honing the Human Edge, will publish in July 2025.
