Shining Examples of Service When the Lights Went Out: Hotel Employees and Service Recovery During the Blackout of 2003 Robert J. Kwortnik ABSTRACT. The electrical outage in the summer of 2003 that interrupted power to thousands of hotels wrought a variety of facilities failures and service-process problems. Fortunately, strong service-recovery efforts from hotel employees mitigated the worst of the blackout’s effects. Using survey data from hotel managers who experienced the blackout, this study highlights those employee actions that most contributed to immediate service recovery; however, the study also reveals limited organizational learning or efforts to failsafe hospitality service from the eventuality of future power failures. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website:©2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.] KEYWORDS. Blackout, hotels, service failure, service recovery, service quality, service employees Robert J. Kwortnik, PhD, is Assistant Professor of Marketing, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University. Address correspondence to: Robert J. Kwortnik, 545 Statler Hall, School of Hotel Administration, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853 (E-mail: rjk34@cornell.edu). This research was made possible by Smith Travel Research and the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University. Journal of Hospitality & Leisure Marketing, Vol. 14(2) 2006 Available online at http://www.haworthpress.com/web/JHLM © 2006 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1300/J150v14n02_03 23
“We’ll leave the light on for you.” Motel 6’s advertising slogan is one of the most memorable in the lodging industry and a catchphrase of reliability. But in the late afternoon on August 14, 2003, the lights went off at a number of Motel 6 properties–as well as thousands of other hotels– across northeastern United States and…