The hospitality industry can be defined as an industry that provides a wide range of services such as hotels, food and beverage service, event planning, entertainment venues, and travel, for example, hotels, pubs, and bars. There are lots of factors that affect the hospitality industry such as cultural factors, economic factors, political factors, and technological factors (Enz, 2009). Economic factors can be considered as one of the vital factors that affect the success of this industry. The recent economic slowdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak has affected this industry brutally. The coronavirus which is also known as Covid-19 has become the world's most dangerous epidemic outbreak which leads the world toward the widespread worldwide health crisis, banking crisis, and economic slowdown. The virus was firstly found in China, Wuhan city in the year 2019 December which dramatically started to spread throughout the world in different countries. This virus transfer from the contact of one person to another easily due to which the government of the different country started to announce the national lockdown and international lockdown to stop the spreading of the virus. There are lots of business organization which has been affected due to the Covid-19 outbreak, the hospitality industry is also one of the sectors which have been affected massively due to this outbreak. Due to the virus, the national and international lockdown has been implemented which leads the hospitality industries to a temporary shutdown in order to stop the social gathering and to avoid face-to-face contact. According to the UNWTO, 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic the global economy was almost shut down overnight (Gursoy, 2020).
As per the Nkengasong, 2020 the period 2020 began with an alarming and unexpected outbreak of a new epidemic, contributing to the number of more than 30 novel diseases that the world has seen in the previous 30 years (Kaushal, 2021). Among all those diseases Covid-19 has become a much more threatening and dangerous disease the world has faced till now. Many people have lost their life due to this deadly disease so the national and international lockdown was one the safest thing that can help to control this virus. However, there are lots of negative impacts due to the uncertain announcement of the government. Lots of the country faces lots of economic crisis. Due to this pandemic, lots of people become unemployed which cause the greatest impact on the living stander of the people. According to Enz, 2009 government stability also determines the accomplishment of the business or organization. The epidemic created an enormous threat to the hospitality industry. According to Bartik et al., Covid-19 guidance such as community lockdown, social distance, travel limit, stay at home led to the temporary closure of many hospitality industries also decrease the demand of the business that could operate (Gursoy, 2020). From De Sausmarez (2004) and Zhang et al. (2010), travel bans, and advisories have once again highlighted the weakness of the tourism and hospitality industries. It is a fact that the hospitality industry mainly depends upon the customer needs and capability to use the services but due to the outbreak of this deadly virus, the economic condition has brutally affected. Even though people want to buy or use the services due to the safety guidance provided by the government neither the services could be sold nor buy previously.
Covid-19 is a virus that infects the human body and human is the consumer of the hospitality industry. The uncertain breakdown of this deadly epidemic has placed the hospitality industry under immense strain. The extremely communicable novel coronavirus threatens the hospitality industry, deteriorating existing fears about its existing and potential capability. A different study has been conducted to overcome this pandemic like the major challenges that the hospitality industry is facing, and how the industry should respond to these challenges. The hospitality sector in the UK has experienced a 21% decrease in revenue during the first half of the year 2020 (UK Hospitality, 2020). Similarly, in Australia, more than 30% of hospitality workers become unemployed (The Canberra Times, 2020). Also, the hospitality industry has been blamed for the wide spreading of the virus, for example the SBS News (2020), The Guardian (2020), Time (2020) pointed out that the spreading of the coronavirus started from the gathering of many people in one of the popular hospitality venues (Li, 2021). The hospitality industry and the tourism industry had been affected drastically by the sudden occurrence of this fatal virus. Many of the hotel and pubs get temporally shut down more than a year in the United Kingdom and still lots of the restaurant and pub are still close as the president of England have announced to have a lockdown. Due to the longer period of the lockdown, many of the hospitality industry is facing a financial or economic crisis, not only the organization but also the employee of the hospitality is facing a crisis as they have become unemployed.
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The hospitality industry is considered a major part of the world economy. In the economical factor there has been a huge impact for instance according to hospitality Europe, 2017 in the European Union almost 12 million people are working in the hospitality industry in the year 2016 while 212 million people in the whole world. From all this estimates hospitality industry provide the livelihoods of many million people and their family (Jones, 2020). Moreover, the social life of the people has also get affected, like a restaurant, cafe, pub, bar is the place where people get socially involved to share their idea, feeling, and recreation but due to temporally shutdown of the hospitality industry must affect people mentally and emotionally as well.
As China the first country where coronavirus has been discovered, the first thing that has been hit by the virus was the hospitality sector. However, it started to recover slowly since 2020. Hotel industries in China have encountered different challenges and all those challenges have every stakeholder of the hotel industry (Hao, 2020). Due to the travel ban and social distancing ban, many tourists and travelers cancel their hotel bookings which leads to an economic crisis like shortage of cash to pay employees, delay to the plan of renovation projects (Elena, 2020). Many owners of the hotel especially individual owners shut down temporally or sold their prosperity in order to survive in this pandemic. Due to this scenario the market valuation of the shares fallen significantly. During the Chinese lunar year, which is the biggest festival in China, the hotel industry faces lots of losses due to Covid-19. According to the Lanjing Finance, 2020 the hotel occupancy rate used to be 80% to 90% in the Chinese lunar year. However, STR, 2020 stated that the OCC dropped drastically from 70% to 8% (Hao, 2020).
Today's generation is advance and well known for its latest technology. As per Zabin, 2019 due to this outbreak hoteliers have started to use different types of artificial intelligence and its technology for example robots. So, in this pandemic following the social guidance using robotics in hotels can help to protect the guest and the frontline service staff from which the hospitality industry can gain trust about their safety once again. After the outbreak hygiene and cleanliness have become the ideology for the customers so it is very important to make it the focal point (Jiang, 2020). According to Novak, 2017 due to the Covid-19 outbreak many stakeholder groups have been affected and involved in company crises, in many ways (Thams, 2020). Therefore, it is important to prioritize and considered the needs and demands of stakeholders. In order to overcome this pandemic, it is important to verify the customer's need and demand and the changes in the customer's perspective toward the services so customers can feel secure to use the services. Due to recent crisis or the hazard created by this virus people are scared to travel and to go out for dinner or anything in the crowded areas so it is generally essential to understand the safety majors to control the virus so that customers can feel safe to use the services.
In conclusion, as the hospitality industry is an important part of the world economy it is very essential to understand the way to restart in a safe way so everybody can feel secure before this epidemic and the economic condition of the global can become stable again. Although some of the hospitality industries are now able to reopen, the customers or consumers are not completely ready to live life the way that used to be. The challenges are now slowly reducing, however quick and effective measures should be taken urgently. Additionally, hospitality sectors should implement strict and coordinated crisis management approaches to reduce the impact. The correct action or the measure should be activated in such a way that can be last for a long period of time.
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