What is crisis management PR?
Crisis management PR is the work of protecting your reputation when something goes wrong in public: preparing for the problems you are most likely to face, responding quickly and honestly when one breaks, and rebuilding trust once it has passed. Good crisis communications is calm, discreet and fast. It rarely makes the news itself, which is usually the point.
Premium businesses feel reputational damage more sharply than most. Your prices, your guests and your standing in the community all rest on trust. A single badly handled moment can travel from a review site to a local news page to a national story in a day, and it will sit in search results for years afterwards.
We help in two ways: planning before anything happens, and senior counsel on the phone when it does.
The crises premium businesses actually face
Very few businesses face the dramatic corporate crises that fill textbooks. The issues that reach the press in the Cotswolds tend to be closer to home, and they are all manageable if handled well.
- A bad review that goes viral. A disappointed guest writes a scathing review, posts it on social media and it gathers pace. The review itself is rarely the problem. The reply, or the silence, usually is.
- Planning disputes. A new barn conversion, a wedding venue licence, a car park, an extension to a listed building. Neighbours organise, parish councils meet and the local paper covers every step. These stories can run for months.
- Food safety incidents. An illness linked to a restaurant, an allergen error or a poor hygiene inspection. Hygiene ratings are public and local reporters check them.
- Staff issues. A tribunal claim, a public resignation, allegations about working conditions or a disagreement that spills onto social media.
- Overtourism backlash. When a village becomes famous, residents push back. Time Out reported that Bibury saw up to 20,000 visitors on a single summer weekend in a village of around 600 people, prompting plans to restrict coaches. Businesses that trade on visitors can find themselves cast as part of the problem.
Each of these calls for a different tone. What they share is that the first response shapes everything that follows.
The first 24 hours
When an issue breaks, most damage is done by speed, silence or the wrong words. We work through the same steps every time.
- Get the facts. What happened, who is affected, what is already public and what is likely to become public. We never let you say something that might turn out to be wrong.
- Put people first. Anyone harmed or upset needs to be looked after before anything is said to the press. Journalists and the public judge you on this more than anything else.
- Decide who is in charge. One decision-maker, one spokesperson, one set of facts. Mixed messages from different staff make a small story bigger.
- Issue a holding statement. Short, human and accurate: what you know, what you are doing and when you will say more. It is almost always better than “no comment”.
- Handle journalists directly. We take the calls, answer questions within what is agreed and correct errors quickly and politely.
- Watch and adjust. We monitor press, review sites and social media, and advise when to say more and when to let a story settle.
Where there is any legal angle, from a tribunal to a possible prosecution, we work alongside your solicitor. We are PR advisers, not lawyers, and the best outcomes come when both are in the room early.
Reputation management before anything goes wrong
The best crisis work happens in a quiet month. For retained clients, we start with an issues audit: a frank conversation about what could realistically go wrong, from an unhappy neighbour to a supplier failure. From that we build a short, practical plan.
- A contact sheet showing who decides, who speaks and who needs to be told first, including owners, investors and key staff.
- Holding statements drafted in advance for your most likely scenarios, so you are editing rather than writing from scratch under pressure.
- A trained spokesperson. Crisis interviews are a particular skill, and our media training prepares people for exactly that.
- Monitoring of your name across the press, review sites and social media, so we see problems early.
- Goodwill in the bank. A steady record of positive stories, good relationships with local journalists and genuine community involvement. Our press office service builds this over time, and it means a single bad story lands against a much stronger background.
Online reviews and search results
For hospitality businesses in particular, reputation management in the UK often starts on review sites. There is plenty you can do, and a few things you must not.
You can reply to every critical review calmly and personally, acknowledging what went wrong and explaining what you have changed. You can ask platforms to remove reviews that break their rules or are clearly false. You can encourage happy guests to leave honest reviews. And you can make sure the first page of search results for your name reflects the whole of your business, through good coverage and an accurate website.
What you cannot do is fight fire with fake praise. Since April 2025, UK consumer law has included an explicit ban on posting and commissioning fake reviews, and the Competition and Markets Authority can now fine businesses up to 10% of global turnover for breaching consumer protection law. Beyond the legal risk, a premium brand caught gaming its reviews rarely recovers its standing quickly. We do not offer suppression tricks or review manipulation, and we would advise you not to use anyone who does.
How we work: calm, discreet, fast
- Senior counsel only. The person on the phone during a crisis has handled difficult stories before and has the authority to act.
- Discretion as standard. Confidentiality agreements, a small circle of people and no loose talk.
- Honesty over spin. The fastest way through most issues is to tell the truth early and show what you are doing about it. We will not help you mislead journalists or the public.
- Proportion. Not every critical post needs a response, and not every local story needs a statement. Knowing when to stay quiet is as important as knowing what to say.
When to call us
Ideally, before anything goes wrong, so we can build your plan and prepare your spokespeople in a calm month. If you are dealing with a live issue now, contact us and tell us briefly what is happening. We will respond as quickly as we can and be honest about whether we are the right people to help. Hotels and restaurants may also find our work on hotel and hospitality PR useful, since guests, reviews and neighbours sit at the heart of both.