Managing a Hotel in Challenging Situations: Temporary Decline of Tourist Flow in Imatra Region

The main objective of this qualitative research was to find out from examples of local companies which crisis management strategies were applied during the challenging period of November 2014 – April 2015. Another objective was to learn the opinion of Russian customers about existing products and services in the region and investigate what could attract the tourists to the area even during the crisis. The main idea for the whole research process was to study the concepts of crisis and crisis management and to produce a thesis work about management in challenging situations and running a hospitality business in circumstances far from advantageous. Such sources as literature, the Internet, articles, customer survey and interviews with managers were used to collect data for the thesis. The data was later interpreted through the use of qualitative analysis methods. The final result of the thesis was that crisis management strategies must be considered and implemented in order to survive crises with minimum losses. The thesis showed that the recent challenges were almost totally unexpected by hotels of Imatra, which caused significant drop in their revenue and occupancy rates