You may think a crisis will never affect your business. However, a crisis can affect any tourism business, large or small, making it difficult or even impossible to carry out your normal day-to-day business.
It can arrive with little or no warning in the shape of flood, fire, disease outbreak, locust plague or unwelcomed media attention. Even if you think you're not in a disaster-prone area, the tone and scale of the media coverage of a nearby emergency may result in a downturn in clientele to your business.
Planning for these disruptive events could be vital to the continuing success or survival of your business.
Business Victoria offers a risk register and treatment plan template that you can download to help you identify risks that could affect your business, the likelihood of it happening and the possible consequences.
This online resource has been developed to help you plan so you can do both, as soon as possible. It includes practical tools, tips and case studies.
Whilst largely focused on managing crisis issues, the information provided is relevant to the management of many types of business risk such as dealing with a life-threatening illness or receiving negative criticism in the media.
A crisis could be:
- loss of power or water supply that means that you cannot deliver your service
- road closure that prevents your staff or clients from accessing your property
- fire or flood that destroys your property and your computer records
- injury, or in the worst case, the death of a client or employee
- your key supplier goes out of business leaving you unable to deliver your service.
Potential consequences of these crises:
- an immediate downturn in visitors
- business closure for an extended period or cease trading altogether
- several weeks or months to return to pre-crisis levels of sales
- limited or no cash flow for an extended period
- legal proceedings against your business
- heightened levels of personal stress.
