Developing and Managing Tourism in the Post Covid-19 Era: Perceptions from Hotel Industry Professionals in Cyprus

Abstract

As in any other part of the world, the COVID-19 pandemic had a huge impact on tourism in the south-eastern island of Cyprus. Indeed, in a turbulent environment with many challenges that Cyprus’ tourism had to face, such as loss of competitiveness, monoculture of tourism, unplanned development, human resources management issues, etc., the pandemic was considered the most significant, that not only led to the halt of tourism activity – and hence, the partial collapse of the industry - for many months, but also brought into the surface several chronic structural problems of the island’s hospitality business, in terms of management. This paper seeks to examine how the tourism sector and more specifically, hotel enterprises in Cyprus handled the crisis and its consequences. To collect the data, exploratory research was utilised through the form of document scanning as well as face-to-face in-depth interviews with representatives of five-star hotels in Cyprus. Findings revealed that the greatest challenge that hotels in Cyprus needed to face during the pandemic era, was the high degree of uncertainty. All respondents stressed the role of the government and its support and emphasized the cooperation between the public and private sectors on the island. The results of the study would be useful for hotel managers to reduce the immediate impact of the crisis and support the long-term recovery of their operations and expansion, of Cyprus tourism, in a sustainable manner.