A cross-country analysis of hotel leaders’ response to COVID-19: a way forward

Abstract

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus resulted in unprecedented economic disruption in global business operations across industries that led to a shutdown of the world economy (Arora and Suri 2020). The overnight transformation in workplace operations caused drastic changes to the way organizations functioned; changes driven primarily by governments’ mandates to manage the public health impacts from the virus. Because of the nature of business, the tourism and hospitality industry has been one of the hardest hit , globally (Gursoy and Chi 2020). Worldwide, governments’ initiatives to flatten the infection rate curve, included lockdowns, closure of international borders, domestic and international flight and cruise travel restrictions, and the adoption of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) like the six-feet social distancing and mask wearing. With some degree of regional variation, the impacts of COVID-19 led to the closure of hospitality operations, resulting in serious repercussions for the industry (Sharma and Mahendru 2020). Since governments in both developed and developing countries recognize the hospitality economic and social major generator foreign exchange earnings, and employment creation 2005), addressing the impact of COVID-19 was an urgent concern for industry leaders. While a high degree of uncertainty and disruption had been caused by the pandemic at the broader level of hospitality operations, attention is also drawn to its impact on the workforce. By nature, this industry is heavily human resource intensive (Jayawardena Simply stated, it takes numerous employees at various levels to operate the industry (Baum Any in the industry creates impacts on the workforce. significant in international travels, millions of hospitality employees felt the effect of reduced work hours, furlough, or loss of employment. Prior to the pandemic, a and reshaping organizational operations in response to the disruption. The study highlights the importance of leadership actions during crisis events and the significance of the reflection-in-action approach. Formal and on-the-job training for CEOs and management should include components on leading through crises to prepare leaders to manage the organization into successful recovery. Leadership crisis training should provide the opportunity to hypothetically test various crisis management models to determine best case scenarios for handling different types of crises. Leaders can be trained to adopt certain competencies to lead effectively and to achieve organizational resilience through its strategies, employees, and other resources (Wooten and James 2008). The results from the crisis management model can be used in HRD practice to offer guidance on how the hotel industry can respond to, and recover from, the devastating effects of COVID-19.