A Hurricane Season Communications Plan for Central Florida Businesses

Most Central Florida businesses have a storm plan for the building. Far fewer have one for the message. Here is how to write the communications half while the season is still fresh in memory.

By AMA Orlando, published November 2, 2026, 9 minute read

Most Central Florida businesses have a storm plan for the building. Shutters, sandbags, a generator, a backup of the server. Far fewer have a plan for the message: who tells staff whether to come in, who updates the hours customers see on Google, who answers the phone recording, and what any of them should say.

That gap shows up the same way every time a storm turns toward the state. The questions arrive before the weather does, and they get answered at eleven at night by whoever happens to have the password. The answers rarely match.

The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, according to the National Hurricane Center. That makes November the right month to write next year's communications plan. The season is still fresh in memory, nothing is bearing down on the coast, and the people who would own each piece of the plan have time to think instead of react.

Why the Message Breaks Before the Building Does

Operations plans fail slowly. A generator runs out of fuel, a supplier misses a truck. Communications fail instantly, because a customer only needs to see two channels that disagree to stop trusting both.

Picture a single afternoon before landfall. Your Google Business Profile says open until nine. Your website says nothing. An Instagram story posted by a manager says closed Thursday. The booking system keeps taking appointments for Friday. Each of those was reasonable when someone set it, and together they tell a customer that nobody is in charge.

The fix is not better writing in the moment. It is deciding, in a calm month, who speaks, on which channels, in what order, with words that were drafted in advance.

Start With the Audiences, Not the Channels

The federal Ready.gov business guidance frames a crisis communications plan around the people a business must reach, not the tools it owns. That order matters, because each audience needs a different answer to the same event.

• Employees and their families need to know whether to report, how they will hear about changes, and who to call if they cannot reach a manager. They come first, always.
• Customers with something booked need to know what happens to their appointment, reservation, order or delivery, and how to move it.
• Customers in general need your hours and whether you are open, in the places they already look.
• Suppliers and delivery partners need to know when to hold shipments and when you can receive again.
• Neighbors and the local community may need to hear from you if your site affects the street, the parking lot or a shared building.
• Local media and officials matter for larger employers, venues and anyone whose closure is itself news.

Write one line for each audience describing what they most need to know. That line becomes the opening sentence of every template you draft later.

Give Every Channel an Owner and a Backup

A channel without a named owner gets updated by everyone or by no one. Build a simple table and keep it with the plan.

Two rules make the table work. Every owner has a backup who lives in a different part of town, because the same storm can knock out both people on one side of the county. And access lives in a shared password manager, never in one person's head or phone.

Write the Messages Before You Need Them

Templates turn a stressful decision into a quick edit. Draft each one now, get it approved now, and store it where every owner can reach it from a phone.

• Preparing. "We are following the storm and will post our plans for (day) by (time) here and on our Google listing."
• Closing. "We are closed (day and date) so our team can stay safe. Appointments for those days will be moved, and we will contact you directly."
• Status update. "We are still closed today. Our next update will be at (time). Here is how to reach us for anything urgent."
• Reopening. "We reopen (day) at (time). Some services are limited this week, and here is what that means for you."
• Delayed orders. "Your order is safe and on hold. It will ship once carriers resume service in our area."

Notice what every template has in common. It states the status, gives a time for the next update, and tells people where to look. Customers forgive a closure. They do not forgive silence after a promise to update.

Update the Places People Actually Check

During a storm, people check the fastest source, and for a local business that is usually the search result. Google Business Profile Help separates two tools. Special hours are meant for closures of seven days or less. The temporarily closed status is meant for closures longer than seven days, an off season, or an indefinite closure. Choose deliberately, and set a reminder to undo it.

After the profile, work outward in the order customers are likely to look:

• Your website, with a short banner at the top of every page rather than a buried news post.
• Your phone greeting, because older customers and visitors still call first.
• Booking, reservation and delivery platforms, which keep accepting orders unless someone pauses them.
• Pinned social posts, edited in place so there is one current answer instead of a feed of contradictions.

If you have never audited how your business appears across listings, the chapter's local SEO playbook for Central Florida walks through the profiles that matter here.

Pause the Marketing That Will Read Badly

Scheduled content does not know the weather. A promotional email built three weeks ago can land in an inbox while the recipient is watching the cone on the evening news, and a cheerful post about a weekend sale reads very differently to someone boarding windows.

Make pausing part of the plan. Name the person who stops scheduled emails, scheduled posts, text campaigns and any ads with time sensitive offers once a watch is issued for your area. Keep a list of the tools where those schedules live, because most teams discover a forgotten automation only after it sends.

Pricing deserves its own line in the plan. Florida's price gouging statute, section 501.160, applies during a declared state of emergency to essential commodities and to dwelling units and storage needed because of the emergency. Even where it does not apply to what you sell, storm themed promotions are a reputational risk. The safe default is no storm offers at all.

Plan for Lost Power and Weak Signal

The plan has to work from a phone on a weak cellular connection, because that may be all anyone has.

• Keep templates offline in a note or document that syncs to every owner's phone, so nobody needs a laptop or office network to post an update.
• Print a contact sheet with staff, key suppliers and vendor support numbers, and keep a copy off site.
• Prefer short text updates to long emails, which are harder to write and read on a failing signal.
• Pick one channel as the source of truth that every other message points to, so a missed update on one platform does not strand anyone.

Point to Official Sources Instead of Forecasting

A business account is not a weather service. Posting your own read of a forecast invites confusion and, if it turns out wrong, blame. Share official sources instead: the National Hurricane Center for the storm itself, the Florida Division of Emergency Management for statewide information, and your county emergency management office for local orders.

Your audience still wants to hear from you, but about your business. What you are doing, when you will decide, and how it affects them. That is the information only you can give.

Reopening Is a Message Too

Reopening is where good intentions most often go wrong. Neighbors may still be without power when your doors open, and a celebratory tone can land badly.

• State the facts plainly: what is open, the hours, and what is limited.
• Take care of the people you inconvenienced with rebooking instructions before you announce anything new.
• Reverse every closure setting you changed, especially the Google profile status and any paused booking tools.
• Hold promotions until the community around you has had time to recover.

Review the Plan After Every Storm and Every Season

Thirty minutes after each event is enough. Ask what customers asked that the templates did not answer, which channel went stale first, who could not get access, and which scheduled message slipped through. Update the plan the same week, while the answers are fresh.

Then do it once more at the end of the season, which is why this article is publishing now.

The Orlando Angle

Central Florida adds two wrinkles most national templates miss. First, a large share of customers for many local businesses are visitors with bookings, and they need rebooking and cancellation answers rather than hours. Write a separate template for them. Second, many households here speak a language other than English at home, so updates should go out in the languages your customers actually use, a point covered in more depth in Orlando Is a Global Marketing Market.

Key Takeaways

• Write the communications plan in November, when the season has ended and nobody is under pressure.
• Start from audiences, employees first, and give every channel an owner and a backup who lives elsewhere.
• Draft and approve templates in advance, each with a status, a time for the next update, and where to look.
• Use special hours for short closures and the temporarily closed status for longer ones, then reverse both.
• Pause scheduled promotions when a watch is issued, and skip storm themed offers entirely.
• Compare notes with other Central Florida marketers at a chapter event, and find planning templates in the chapter resources.

Topics: crisis communications, hurricane season, small business, Google Business Profile, Central Florida