A new management "tool kit" from an expert at Cornell University may help hoteliers everywhere be better prepared the next time disaster strikes and the lights go out or the water stops running.

"Many hotels have faced challenges in recent years due to storms, human error and terrorism," said Robert Kwortnik, an assistant professor at Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and an affiliate of the Hotel School's Center for Hospitality Research (CHR). Kwortnik, who developed the tool kit from his research on hotel service failures and recovery efforts during the northeastern U.S. blackout of August 2003, noted: "The hotel industry is still not prepared for unexpected events such as a protracted power failure. The lesson of recent natural and human-made disasters is that almost any hotel needs to plan for the reality that it will have to operate without its utilities, including electricity and running water."

He says that hotel preparedness should focus on these areas: emergency planning and management; facilities and process management; people management; and customer management.

A key feature of his tool kit is an emergency preparedness check list that includes: performing crisis simulations and planning appropriate responses; knowing where a hotel is vulnerable if power goes down; and knowing which systems are on emergency or standby power.

Also suggested in the check list are: Keeping a known location of the tools needed to ensure the functionality of manual facilities and processes; empowering employees to solve problems and make decisions during times of crisis; locating and marking phone lines that are not susceptible to the loss of electrical power; and rewarding professionalism and "service above self."