Challenges of Hospitality, Leisure and Travel industry during Covid-19 pandemic

This article discusses the challenges faced by the hospitality, leisure and travel industry during Covid-19 pandemic and the ways to overcome them. It also highlights the positive and negative impacts of the pandemic on the industry.

Academic Writing for
Business and
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Challenges of Hospitality, Leisure and Travel industry during Covid-19 pandemic.................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Travel and tourism means movement from one place to another between a distant geographical
locations for refreshment, rest or some other purpose. This sector contains various industries like
travel company, retail travel etc. and helps in rising the economic income, creating thousands of
jobs and development of infrastructure. Tourism has become an important sector which has a
great effect on the development of country's economy. This file covers the challenges faced by
the hospitality, leisure and travel industry during Covid-19 pandemic situation. Also it depicts
about the way these industries overcome by these issues and positive or negative reaction of
hospitality and tourism sector (He, Zha and Loo, 2020).
MAIN BODY
Challenges of Hospitality, Leisure and Travel industry during Covid-19 pandemic
Tourism and hospitality sector is the most contributory and affected sectors with a great
fall of international demand between global travel limitations as many borders were fully closed.
This pandemic has impacted various factors of hospitality sector like migrant nature of the
hospitality staff, restaurant services etc. The main reason for the issue faced by hospitality is not
only Covid-19 but also the tourism sector as international tourists has stopped travelling due to
the pandemic which resulted in the declining of international tourism market.
According to the UNWTO world tourism barometer, arriving of international tourists
decreased by 72% in January to October 2020 hold in by low confidence in traveller and strict
restrictions at travel place due to (Covid-19 situation Impact assessment of the Covid-19
outbreak on international tourism, 2020.). Pandemic situation in the market has also led to the
mass production shutdowns and disturbance in the supply chain which will cause global
spreading effects in all the economic sectors which was never expected.
Although lock down was lifted and all the hotels, restaurants, tourist destinations were
allowed to reopen but due to the lives and health of people are still a priority for everyone so
positive result of this sector will be restored soon (Dwyer, 2018). They had used many ways to
overcome the this issue of pandemic like adopting cloud technologies through which remote
working will be easy as hoteliers can lead the process of hotel without even being preset there.
They can also use pandemic time for the hotel maintenance and renovation as visitors were also
waiting for this period to end which is a perfect time to improve and catchup.
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Job vacancies in this sector of UK have seen the increment and are very high when
compare to pre pandemic situation as in June 2021, number of employees in this sector is 11%
below February 2020 levels (Coronavirus and its impact on UK hospitality, 2021). They can also
concentrate on the home delivery services during this pandemic and can attract millennial
travellers as millennials are the most eager to explore the world after this pandemic ends.
Due to the impact of Covid 19 on the hospitality, accommodation and travel industry, it is
having a positive impact as well as negative impact in the market due to many reasons. Various
job opportunities as because of pandemic situation there will be increment in job vacancies as in
a pandemic situation everyone wants to leave.
In Leisure sector, various museums, galleries, libraries where people can spend their
vacant time were all closed due to pandemic situation for public which created a huge loss of
income for a long term financial sustainability.
The outbreak of covid 19 states a very important and developing challenge in the tourism
sector as for all individuals safety and protection of health is the topmost priority which restricts
travelling of all the tourists from one place to another. This will result in a great loss in the social
and economy of country. This sector played a vital role in investing all efforts to preserve
natural and cultural heritage which supports livelihoods, created various opportunities other than
travelling like concentrating on hobbies, faced various challenges in case of security, marketing,
digitization etc. Due to pandemic, work becomes more easier for people as now they can book
tickets online sitting at home and travel safely and securelyCholik and SE, 2017).
Coronavirus has changed the whole structure of living and all its standards and likewise it
has changed the way of travelling so from sanitising hands to masks, covid has changed the
world of travel. The council has developed new rules and regulations to provide safety for
everyone by giving protective tools to visitors like masks, screening tools, scanners, cleaning etc.
Covid 19 pandemic has hit hospitality and tourism sector hard because of many reasons
like managers in hotel have faced uncertainty in this era to survive as hotels and restaurants were
closed for months during this period so there is no way to earn for them which results in a great
loss for them and affects the performance and stability of hospitality industry. But this will create
one positive factor for all the owners of this sector as they can do their modification of hotels and
restaurants by doing proper construction, decoration etc. and utilise this time period in proper
development which attract all the visitors to enter (Dieke, 2020). In fact, hospitality industry had
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also started takeaways and pre online booking of hotel rooms and tables which allows them to
sit on their separate table and they don't have to wait in a crowd. This will give the best outcome
for economic growth and also various job opportunities as staff has already left the hotel so
various posts are available to join in this sector like front office, chef etc(Tsai and Wang, 2017).
Due to covid, there is a great impact on the digitization and technology, as everything is
online nowadays. Digitization process across industries, and technology service providers saw a
drastic change in this outbreak from online booking to online payment like by making apps,
paytm, google pay etc. which provides safety and security to all consumers in this pandemic.
This results in the easiness of work without any effort for public health and environment. Not
only bookings and payments are done by using technologies but also in some hotels and
restaurants also managers had improvised the facility of serving foods with the help of robot
which is again a beneficial point for all visitors as well as staff working in a hotel.
Upskilling, reskilling and training the workforce is also important as due to pandemic,
staff has left the hotel and restaurants due to ban in opening them so there is a huge scope in job
opportunities. This lead to new joining of staff and digital transformation is all about
empowering people to work in a new digitised way to prepare workforce for future and enable
them to prepare the staff to adapt new changes in a safe way by providing a proper training to
employees. In travel sector, there is a huge decrement in business travels, which results in the
increasing number of zoom or Microsoft team meetings(Weaver, Tang and Zhao, 2020).
In these sectors, recovery has started as people have started travelling and hoteliers have
to focus on creative marketing skills and communications to create confidence in their visitors
and make them believe that they are safe. They can highlight their safety measures which are
taken to provide safety and secure environment to their consumers like proper sanitising facility,
masks, proper scanning, use of gloves etc. to pull guests and increase occupancy levels. So the
post covid Indian tourism industry makes a move towards more sustainable, safety, quality and
healthy hygienic tourism.
Research has investigated that this pandemic impacts on changing distribution of travel
and leisure sector across 65 countries which has used daily data from December 2019 to may
2020 to provide earlier evidences from a panel of countries(Hosany, Martin and Woodside,
2020). Governments around the world has enforced emergency act to conflict the spreading of
this virus, likeable to individualistic and business organization to not organise unnecessary
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tourism, face-to-face meetings, events, and so on (The impact of COVID-19 on the travel and
leisure industry returns: Some international evidence, 2020). This will result in a safety, healthy
and secure environment for all the consumers as everyone has their priority towards health.
CONCLUSION
It is concluded from the above report that the adverse pandemic situation of covid – 19
has affected the global economies severely. This pandemic has a very huge impact on the
hospitality, leisure and travel industry like decrease in the international tourism market, closing
of hotels and restaurants, closing of all the leisure sectors, travel bans. In order to handle this
kind of pandemic situation, different measures were taken to address the consequential issues.
While considering the hospitality and travel industry, it was the worst hit sector. This sector
faced huge amount of losses which turned the profitability situation upside down. It not only
reduced the profitability levels but it reduced the level of efficiency and effective in the business
operations as well. Although, it has been a difficult situation but the hospitality and travelling
sector has fought this situation of facing the global pandemic throughout all the odds strongly.
Therefore, this pandemic situation has the global hospitality, travelling and leisure industry to
work against the most challenging situations in such a way that they can face the future
contingencies efficiently.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Cholik, M. A. and SE, M., 2017. The development of tourism industry in Indonesia: Current
problems and challenges. European Journal of Research and Reflection in Management Sciences
Vol, 5(1).
Dieke, P. U., 2020. Tourism in Africa: Issues and prospects. Sustainable human resource
management in tourism, p.9.
Dwyer, L., 2018. Saluting while the ship sinks: the necessity for tourism paradigm
change. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 26(1), pp.29-48.
He, L., Zha, J. and Loo, H. A., 2020. How to improve tourism energy efficiency to achieve
sustainable tourism: Evidence from China. Current Issues in Tourism, 23(1), pp.1-16.
Hosany, S., Martin, D. and Woodside, A. G., 2020. Emotions in tourism: Theoretical designs,
measurements, analytics, and interpretations. Journal of Travel Research,
p.0047287520937079.
Tsai, C. T. S. and Wang, Y. C., 2017. Experiential value in branding food tourism. Journal of
Destination Marketing & Management, 6(1), pp.56-65.
Weaver, D., Tang, C. and Zhao, Y., 2020. Facilitating sustainable tourism by endogenization:
China as exemplar. Annals of Tourism Research, 81, p.102890.
[Online]
Coronavirus and its impact on UK hospitality. 2021. [Online] Available through:
<https://www.ons.gov.uk/businessindustryandtrade/business/activitysizeandlocation/
articles/coronavirusanditsimpactonukhospitality/january2020tojune2021>
Impact assessment of the Covid-19 outbreak on international tourism. 2020. [Online] Available
through: <https://www.unwto.org/impact-assessment-of-the-covid-19-outbreak-on-
international-tourism>
The impact of COVID-19 on the travel and leisure industry returns: Some international
evidence. 2020. [Online] Available through:
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1354816620971981>
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