Hospitality in a pandemic – an era of global crisis and change

Abstract

Currently, due to the prevailing epidemiological situation around the world, the issue of restoring the hotel business is especially acute. The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a devastating blow to many sectors of the economy, but the most negative and grave consequences of these events were felt by the sphere of international tourism and hospitality. The purpose of this study is to identify the main ways to rehabilitate the hospitality industry, as well as to consider the current trends in the hotel business in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors through the retrospective analysis of the situation at the beginning of 2020 for a number of the most popular Russian and foreign tourist destinations, provide basic data characterizing the negative changes in the scale of tourist flows, a drop in the occupancy of accommodation facilities and, as a result, a catastrophic drop in income in the field of tourism and hospitality. However, given that any crisis situation is not only problems, but also additional opportunities, the authors, on the basis of the studied experience of hotel enterprises, indicate in the article those positive changes that such a long period of stagnation in the hotel business inevitably entails. These are, first of all, innovative approaches to ensuring the safety of guests and staff, as well as the search for new consumer segments, the formation of new hotel products that are relevant for hotel enterprises, whose activities are already adapted to the new travel format amid the still ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.