Industries
Your guests trust you with their safety. Be ready to earn it.
Hotels, restaurants, travel companies, and hospitality brands run on trust. When something goes wrong, guests feel it in real time, and so does everyone watching on social media.
We help hospitality and leisure organizations build crisis management, business continuity, and crisis communications programs that protect guests and employees, keep operations running, and hold up in front of the public.
✅ Practitioner-led, not advisory
✅ One crisis structure from corporate to every location and franchisee
✅ Tested in real exercises, not just on paper
What we hear from hospitality leaders
We’ve worked with restaurant chains, travel services firms, airlines, and hospitality brands for more than a decade. We hear the same things from the people who run their programs:
“Would the loss of a senior executive actually constitute a crisis?”
“Last week’s fiasco woke us up.”
“We have two crisis teams. The responsibilities overlap.”
“We have two different crisis plan documents, and they overlap.”
“We really worked to simplify this into one team, one plan.”
“I don’t have enough time and hands.”
Sound familiar? You don’t need another consultant to tell you what you already know. You need practitioners who will simplify the program, build what’s missing, and help you run it.
The hospitality reality
Few industries face as many kinds of crisis, as publicly, as hospitality and leisure:
- Guest and employee safety: active assailants, workplace violence, and medical emergencies, in places open to the public around the clock.
- Food safety and product quality: a contamination or recall that starts in one location and becomes a national story in hours.
- Cyber and payment data: in September 2023, a cyberattack cost MGM Resorts an estimated $100 million in Adjusted Property EBITDAR, according to the company’s own SEC filing. PCI DSS requires an incident response plan that includes business recovery and continuity procedures and data backup processes, tested every year.
- Reputation: a franchisee incident, an activist campaign, or one viral video can do more damage than the event itself.
- Weather, travel disruption, and geopolitical events that strand guests and close properties with little warning.
The answer isn’t a separate plan for every scenario. It’s one crisis framework, with clear severity levels, scenario-specific annexes, and a communications plan, that every location and franchisee can follow.
How we help hospitality organizations
- Resiliency Diagnosis®. A standards-based evaluation of your continuity and crisis programs, even mature ones, with a maturity score and a business case for what to fund next.
- Crisis management. One crisis framework and plan, role-specific checklists, and annexes for scenarios such as active assailants and food safety.
- Resilience as a Service. Crisis management, business continuity, IT disaster recovery, and exercises run as one program, with our team doing the work when your staff is stretched.
- Business continuity. BIAs, plans, and governance for properties, restaurants, reservation and booking systems, and the suppliers you depend on.
- Crisis communications. Messaging, social media response, and reputation strategy for guests, employees, franchisees, and the media.
- Exercises. Active assailant, food safety, cyberattack, severe weather, and franchisee misconduct exercises, from tabletops to multi-day simulations.
- Cyber incident response planning. A cyber response that connects the technical team to the executives who decide what to tell guests and regulators.
- Coaching. One-on-one coaching for crisis management leaders who are new in the role.
“
Their emergency planning and crisis response guidance helped us protect people, reassure regulators, and keep operations moving.
Vice President, Communications · Global QSR Chain
55
discovery interviews in one global travel services firm’s Resiliency Diagnosis®
700+
documents reviewed, including hundreds of business continuity plans
5
scenario-specific annexes in one global restaurant chain’s crisis plan
4
crisis exercises a year, run through crisis management as a service
Travel Services
Evaluating a Global Travel Services Firm’s Resilience Program
A Resiliency Diagnosis® of an already robust program after COVID-19, with a maturity model and a business case for further investment.
Read the case study →
Restaurants
A Crisis Management Framework for a Global QSR Chain
A crisis framework and plan, role-specific checklists, five scenario annexes, a trained crisis team, and a tabletop exercise.
Read the case study →
Restaurants
Crisis Management as a Service for a Global QSR Chain
With limited internal staff, a global quick service restaurant chain runs its crisis program with Bryghtpath, including four exercises a year.
Read the case study →
Programs aligned to
ISO 22301 · ISO 22361 · ISO/IEC 27031 · PCI DSS · NIST CSF
Our hospitality and leisure work
All of our case studies are anonymized.
Restaurants
- A crisis management framework and plan for a global quick service restaurant (QSR) chain, with five scenario-specific annexes, including active assailant and food safety. Read the case study.
- Crisis management as a service for a global quick service restaurant chain: quarterly crisis team meetings and training, four exercises a year, and advice to executives during disruptions. Read the case study.
Travel
- A Resiliency Diagnosis® for a leading global travel services firm, reviewing an already robust program against ISO 22301 after COVID-19. Read the case study.
- A year of one-on-one coaching for a newly promoted global crisis management leader at a leading European travel services firm. Read the case study.
More of our hospitality and leisure work
- An enterprise business continuity, disaster recovery, and crisis management program for one of the world’s largest travel service providers after its spin-off from its parent organization, including the strategy, the program design, and the business case for technology, people, and compliance resources.
- A crisis management framework and crisis communications messaging for a regional air carrier, built for a major aviation disaster.
- An aviation incident plan for a major financial institution’s corporate aviation program, integrated with its enterprise crisis management program, with crisis and internal communications advice and an exercise of the plan with internal teams and outside resources.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work with restaurants, hotels, and travel companies?
Yes. Our hospitality and leisure work includes global restaurant chains, travel services firms, airlines, and corporate aviation programs.
How do we make one crisis plan work across locations and franchisees?
Keep the framework simple, define clear severity levels and activation criteria, and give each role a short checklist. Then train the people who will use it and exercise the handoff from location to corporate.
Which scenarios should our crisis plan cover?
Start with the ones most likely to hurt guests and the brand: active assailants, food safety and recalls, cyberattacks and payment data breaches, severe weather, and franchisee or employee misconduct. We build those as annexes to one framework, not as separate plans.
What does PCI DSS require for incident response?
PCI DSS requires an incident response plan that includes business recovery and continuity procedures and data backup processes, reviewed and tested every year. We build it into your crisis management program instead of leaving it as a separate binder.
Our program is already strong. Is a Resiliency Diagnosis® still worth it?
Often, yes. A global travel services firm with an already robust program used one to measure its maturity against ISO 22301 and build the business case for its next investment.
We don't have the staff to run a crisis program. Can you run it for us?
Yes. Through crisis management as a service or Resilience as a Service, our team runs the program day to day, with your people owning the decisions.
We can help.
Let Bryghtpath put its hospitality experience to work for your organization
From the front desk to the boardroom, we’ll help you build a program that protects your guests, your people, and your brand.