Responding to the Pandemic

Abstract

The chapter presents a case study on how Indian hotel industry was affected by COVID-19. Three hotels—Lemon Tree, Oyo Rooms, and Taj Hotels—were selected to elaborate. The study found that the hotel industry developed various policies to keep running their hotels during the pandemic. Lemon Tree joined various hospitals to provide rooms to COVID patients, provided free food and face masks to individuals. Oyo Rooms gave employee stock ownership plans of Rs 130 crore to its COVID-hit employees. Taj Hotels did not cut down the salaries of their employees and reduced its seating capacity by 50%. The study concluded that as the hospitality sector battled hard to continue during the pandemic, modernization would become an imperative tool in the post-COVID period to beat obstructions and spotlight advancement. So, the companies should minimize fixed costs and maximize variable costs. They should preferably have liquid cash available that could enable them to mitigate the risk.