Problems and Opportunities in the Hospitality Industry in a Masked and Rubber-Gloved World

Abstract

As the global tourism industry is under sway of the novel Coronavirus, and the world still remains with a limited medical capacity to threat the pandemic, with no vaccine and with its only weapon of precautionary measures, masks, gloves and lockdown, a part of hospitality industry develops new stratagems and applies new tactics to survive the upcoming financial debacle. The almost worldwide lockdown, the brutal impact of mass cancellations caused by the virus spread, and the people's significantly reduced willingness to travel produce major upheavals in the tourism economy. The purpose of this study is to systematize the problems and opportunities in the hospitality industry in a pandemic. For this study there has been applied the secondary research methodology with several pieces of literature such as scientific journal articles, preprint papers, government documents, data from global organizations and mass media data etc., but no primary research was conducted. As the phenomenon is still ongoing, there is not yet the significant number of published papers about the opportunities in the hospitality sector. The main findings of the present study are demonstrating that, although this situation makes tourism highly vulnerable, the sector is also in a unique position to contribute to broader and just recovery plans and actions. Significant conclusions are the vulnerability of the travel sector and travel restrictions’ effects on hospitality industry, the appearance of a new form of hotel clients - ‘quarantine guests’, and the need of new survival strategies on hotel industry based on virtualization and domestication.