Avian Flu Threat: Now Is The Time To Prepare

By Staff -- HOTELS Magazine, 7/1/2006

WORLDWIDE While the timing and the severity of an avian flu pandemic are difficult to predict, companies should not gamble with preparedness. A pandemic would likely devastate many areas of the world and requires crisis management planning on a global level. For the hotel industry, the effects could be even greater with both guests and employees to consider. So what can hoteliers do? For one, look to the recent past. From 9/11 and SARS to the Thailand tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, the hotel industry has faced unprecedented challenges over the last few years and can learn from each of them to develop a comprehensive set of tools—from scenario planning to risk mitigation strategies—to handle an avian flu crisis.

“Hotels need to be planning for this. Identify the precautions you would need now and appoint a point person at the hotel to put together an action plan,” recommends Heather Fesko, a Chicago-based lawyer specializing in risk management for the law firm Epstein Becker & Green. Fesko represents a wide range of health care organizations and believes many of the issues facing the health care industry are applicable to hotels. What is the question she hears most often? “What if no one can come to work?” The same issue, she says, arises for hoteliers who are likely to have guests stranded in their hotel rooms with few staff members on hand to accommodate them. The major issue here is supplies. “If an outbreak occurs, hotels—like hospitals—need to have plans in place to get food and supplies to guests, even with limited staff,” Fesko says. They also need to develop comprehensive plans for how to communicate with the guests (who she says would have to practice “social distancing” by staying isolated in their hotel rooms) and with each other, and screen for health problems. “It’s just good practice to plan for a pandemic event even if this doesn’t happen,” Fesko says, adding that since 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, “negligent failure to plan” has become a hot-button of litigation.

Steps To Action

Hoteliers agree. Many of the big hotel companies have released prepared statements letting the public know that they are developing comprehensive action plans across all levels of the organizations. Kevin Kruse, vice president of loss prevention for Ritz-Carlton Hotels Co., for example, says he has been working with parent company Marriott International to develop a set of policies and procedures. “Our plan is tiered at three stages. Currently we are at stage one—which includes staff training, pandemic supply acquisition and policy development,” Kruse says. “Every employee in our company has received flu-specific training. Our leadership teams have received more training in the management of pandemics and our corporate Intranet has a section devoted to pandemic preparedness.”

Stage two, Kruse says, would be triggered by a known case of human-to-human transmission of the virus and would entail enhanced hygiene procedures at all of its hotels. “Standard operating procedures and the necessary equipment to conduct these procedures have already been acquired and promulgated at the hotel and corporate levels,” he says. Stage three, he adds, would be triggered by the World Health Organization or Centers for Disease Control notification of an actual pandemic. “This would require the execution of extensive health screening, travel safety procedures and working closely with local authorities,” he adds.

SARS Education

Development of many of these procedures came out of Ritz-Carlton’s Asian properties as a result of their 2003 experience with SARS. “Their experience with the screening of employee health and disinfection on all front-of-the-house and heart-of-the-house areas was the foundation for our current plans,” Kruse says. For Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts, the SARS epidemic also is playing a key role in its strategies for dealing with the threat of avian flu. During that crisis the company prepared a corporate SARS manual based on lessons the company had learned and best practices it had initiated in response. “From the SARS crisis all Shangri-La employees and management have learned to be prepared to implement all precautionary measures to provide and maintain a clean and hygienic environment, to act with great urgency, and communicate effectively and openly,” explains Greg Dogan, regional vice president for Shangri-La. Further, the SARS crisis helped the company prepare a financial action plan that provides for employees should an outbreak occur. With the very real possibility that much of one’s staff could be unable to get to work for several weeks during a pandemic, such precautions are smart business decisions that also make employees feel secure.

Dogan says Shangri-La also has been developing a comprehensive action plan based on stages of the threat. “The company’s action plans are based on four levels of preparedness and operational response that are aligned with the WHO guidelines for potential development and spread of avian flu,” Dogan says. But beyond putting policies in place, Dogan stresses that it is leadership in a crisis that will set hoteliers apart. “In any sort of crisis people would look for leadership, not just policies, not procedures, not ideas. As professional hoteliers, it is incumbent on us to be fully prepared with our preventive measures, action plans and contingencies. But we also must remember that we are dealing with people’s health and safety. And this is where leadership is crucial,” he says. “In the event of a crisis we must be ready to respond with courage, calmness and always with a sense of compassion and a high degree of care.”