In last few years, there has been a growing interest in systemic security management methods in the hotel industry, despite the fact that there is no legal obligation to prepare a crisis management system. This is primarily due to the growing importance of an appropriate level of quality of life for people. This results in constantly changing legal requirements, as well as the development and establishment of standards defining guidelines or specifications for safety management systems. An effectively functioning crisis management system improves the economic results of the organization thanks to better than before management of processes in which business continuity may be disrupted. It can be considered that crisis management includes the integration of deliberately planned organizational, as well as logistical and financial projects, which are aimed at preventing crisis situations, ensuring the efficiency of decision-making structures at all levels of management and the readiness of forces and resources to take actions aimed at reacting and eliminating the effects of the situation. The subject of the research is the crisis management system of the hotel industry and external factors shaping it. The aim of the study is to identify the crisis management system and its assumptions in the external context of the organization. The research problem is expressed in the question: what external factors are crucial for the functioning of the crisis management system in the hotel industry? An attempt to answer the main research problem is the following directional hypothesis: economic and legal factors are crucial for the functioning of the crisis management system in the hotel industry. At the data collection stage, the diagnostic survey method and survey technique were used. At the data analysis stage, quantitative methods (descriptive statistics) and qualitative methods (text data analysis) were used. At the stage of data evaluation, the diagnostic survey method and the individual in-depth interview (IDI) technique were used. The survey results, as well as the results of the expert interview, confirm that economic and legal factors are the key external factors indicated by representatives of the hotel industry. However, when determining which of them are positive and which are negative, divergent opinions appear in the study.