Outbreak pitch for a company in Hong Kong

"Outbreak pitch for a company in Hong Kong | AboutHK.Com - more information about HK"

In the business world - where book titles such as "Only the Paranoid Survive" thrive - successful executives hope for the best, but for the worst. But no amount of planning could have prevented the misfortune befall is that the Metro Park Hotel Group last week. The Metropark Hotel in Wanchai has been shut down when a guest - after recently arrived from his native Mexico - diseased with the city of the first cases of H1N1. City health officials, chastened by the experience of SARS quickly quarantined the hotel and its guests and nearly 300 employees. The city is trying to avoid a repetition of what happened in 2003 when a doctor in the vicinity of Guangzhou came to Hong Kong for a wedding. In his one-night stay in the doctor, who had been treating patients with an unusual respiratory illness, he fell ill. He infected at least 10 other guests, to Hong Kong University research. The guests then SARS spread to the rest of the world. The hotel? Metropark Hotel Kowloon. Formerly known as the metropolis, the hotel was Ground Zero for the first cases of SARS in Hong Kong. Both hotels are on four properties in the city, a subsidiary of China Travel International, the 50 hotels in China. With the world press corps parked outside photos of boredom, which the customers, the hotel chain, is realistic about its potential impact on business. "Revenue loss and image damage is a concern," said Benny Ng, an operations manager for the chain. "When an incident like this happens, obviously, it will have a little impact on the business. "With this and the incident in 2003, (the situation) was not caused by the hotel, and has nothing to do with the hygiene or the facilities of the property," he said. "What we can do is try our best to make our guests, and the staff, comfortable to help them to overcome the quarantine and difficult times in forthcoming days." The markets shrugged seem to have a fear of the flu - Shares of Hong Kong-listed China Travel International rose almost 6 percent in trading Monday. Display Still, what are the odds of the city, the first reported outbreak of two separate new diseases are on the same small hotel chain? For the calculation that you need a variety of factors Akin to the calculation of lightning on the same twice. "It does seem like a bit of a freak occurrence," said Dr. Alan D Miller, an expert on economics and game theory at the University of Haifa. "But freak occurrences do happen." Comments Please login to post comments or replies.