The holistic repercussions of the ongoing war and refugee crisis on the Polish travel agencies

Abstract

The Russia–Ukraine conflict is a common concern and hot-debated topic of the international community. This study aims to assess the influence of the war and refugee crisis's holistic repercussions on the Polish tour operators/travel agencies; and elaborate on the response capability of managers/concerned authorities. Findings revealed that the war and refugee crisis negatively impacted the travel agencies, and managers were put under severe pressure—decreased number of tourists, plummeted total revenue and surged total costs. The findings further contribute to the advancement and strengthening of understanding of the differential impacts of the factors on tour operators/travel agencies by their grouping criteria (license, main market and IATA certification). The travel agencies' performance metrics and operational statistics deteriorated. The managers' responses about predicting the impact of the ongoing crisis also revealed that the effects of the war and refugee crisis would continue in the near future. The contribution and novelty of the research are the advancement of understanding by evaluating refugees and war's holistic repercussions; how the forced migrations have influenced the performance metrics and elaboration of managers' response capability; and unearthing the methods for the forced migrations.