Speed key to resolving PR nightmare

By KRIS HUNDLEY

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 10, 2001

Here's the first rule of crisis management in a public relations disaster:

The longer the situation drags on unresolved, the greater the damage and the harder it will be to fix.

That's why experts consulted Thursday said they would have advised the management of Tampa Marriott Waterside to meet immediately with leaders of the Progressive National Baptist Convention after the group's angry walkout Wednesday night.

"I'd counsel them to meet with the group and be very decisive about the actions they take," said Tom Harmening, a senior managing director with the Hill & Knowlton public relations firm in Tampa. "And I'd do it five minutes ago."

About 1,000 attendees at the weeklong convention of black Baptists stormed out of a banquet at the Marriott after a guest said a white hotel worker spit into a punch bowl.

The Rev. C. Mackey Daniels, convention president, led the group out after being told the hotel's top manager was unavailable to handle the complaint.

Harmening said Daniels' act was an expression of frustration.

"When someone is so incensed, you've got to make it right," said Harmening, who specializes in crisis management. "You've got to do an investigation on one hand to try to determine what happened, but you've got to start talking first."

That apparently happened Thursday afternoon as Tampa Mayor Dick Greco convened a meeting of convention delegates and hotel management. Harmening said Greco, who has been a big proponent of the Marriott and the city's convention business, has an important role in the talks.

"The city should abjectly apologize and ensure this group is treated well, not only on this visit but also make attempts to get them back in the future," he said. "This could be very embarrassing for the city if it's not handled properly."

More than 15.3-million tourists visited Tampa last year, spending $2.4-billion. With 40,000 people working in hospitality-related businesses, tourism is the city's largest industry.

Of those visitors, about 6.6 percent come to Tampa for conventions. That segment is growing, with about 40 major conventions held in each of the past two years at the city-owned convention center.

The 16-month-old Marriott Waterside, with its 717 rooms, was seen as crucial to the growth of Tampa's convention business. Before opening, the hotel estimated that 80 percent of its guests would be drawn by conventions.

The lure of more hotel rooms has shown results. Robert Rose, director of the Tampa Convention Center, said the facility has added five to six large shows a year since the Marriott opened in April 2000.

Rose and other local officials were reluctant to speculate about any ripple effect Wednesday's incident would have on tourism or conventions. This is not the first time a group of black visitors has been unhappy with their treatment in Tampa.

In 1997 organizers of the annual Florida Classic football game between two historically black colleges moved the event to Orlando after alumni complained of mistreatment by Tampa hoteliers and retailers.

Hill & Knowlton's Harmening said any time a string of events raises sensitivity to a particular issue, it reinforces the need to act quickly.

"If it happened as alleged, it should never be tolerated," he said.

Larry Smith, president of the Institute for Crisis Management in Louisville, Ky., said the incident in Tampa could become a larger problem for Marriott if not dealt with appropriately.

"One of the wonderful things about branding is that when things go well, everybody benefits," he said. "But when things go wrong, it tends to hurt everybody. Marriott could find itself the target of demonstrations all across the country."

Smith, said the potential damage could be far-ranging.

"Companies tend to deal well with the big problems, but it's the little things that get you," he said. "Companies underestimate their impact and they come back to bite them."

Nonsense, said Ed Turanchik, president and chief executive of the group working to bring the 2012 Olympics to Tampa. Turanchik brushed off questions about whether the Marriott incident might make Olympic officials reluctant to choose the area.

"Marriott has a great tradition of supporting diversity and the Olympic ideals, and obviously Marriott would not tolerate such behavior," he said.

-- Information from Times files was used in this report. Kris Hundley can be reached at

hundley@sptimes.com or (727) 892-2996.

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