The impact of Covid-19 on hospitality industry and recovery strategies

Abstract

The huge crisis that the world is now facing as a result of the appearance of COVID-19, which was declared as a world pandemic in March 2020, is unprecedented. COVID-19 has had a catastrophic social and economic impact on several sectors, with tourism and hospitality sectors being hit the hardest. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on the hotel industry in Europe by reviewing existing literature and administrating a survey questionnaire to 53 hotel managers in Europe. The study examined the impact COVID-19 had on these European hotels, the recovery strategies they employed to handle this challenging situation and their expectations of their future as businesses. The results indicate that the performance of all the hotels in Europe, under this study, were greatly influenced by the coronavirus. What proved to have a significant relationship were the location and the size of the hotels and their decreasing Average Daily Rates. The relationship between the type of the hotel and its decreasing Occupancy Rates were also found to be significant. As far as the recovery strategies are concerned, all of them followed several strategies in order to face the crisis, reduce their costs and survive as businesses. In addition, the majority of them agreed that they are required to be better prepared for crisis management in the future. Most of them admitted that their greatest concern was uncertainty in international travel, the rising costs of daily products and increasing business revenue. As for their future expectations, the majority of them were optimistic about the future and that the hotel industry will recover by 2023. The implications, which derive from this research, can be significant for the hotel managers in their effort to fight against the pandemic consequences.