Hospitality Industry: Challenges and Recommendations During COVID-19

This report delves into the significant challenges the hospitality industry faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the UK market. It identifies key issues such as job losses, technological adaptation, and financial instability, which collectively hindered the industry's growth and customer retention. The report highlights the impact of lockdowns and reduced customer arrivals, leading to decreased sales, profitability, and overall economic contribution. Furthermore, it discusses the need for technological upgrades to maintain customer engagement and the financial difficulties faced by smaller businesses. The report concludes with recommendations for recovery, including leveraging technology, implementing health and safety measures, and adopting effective marketing strategies to regain customer trust and market presence. Ultimately, the report emphasizes the importance of proactive measures to ensure the hospitality industry's resilience and future growth.

Academic Writing for
Business and
Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Challenges and issues faced by Hospitality industry during Covid-19 .................................3
Recommendations:.................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................6
REFERENCE...................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
The report aims to analyse some key issues which impacted upon the hospitality industry
during Covid-19 pandemic. Hospitality industry is one of the leading sector in the market. It
cover large area in economy and provide all kinds of services such as leisure, accommodation,
food and entertainment (Kumar, Normala, and Belhadi, 2021). This industry known for
providing best services as per customer requirement and need to control economic impact.
Covid-19 has created much impact on the economy as it changes the business perspective and
affect their sales and growth. This leads to result in serious lock down in many countries and
people are not allowed to take part in any activity outside home. So, The pandemic creates a lot
of trouble for this industry which creates many challenges. These include low occupancy rates,
loss in jobs and many other issues. This report is going to discuss about these challenges in
broader context. Also, how company needs to respond to these issues through providing relevant
recommendation.
MAIN BODY
Hospitality industry is one of the global sector which is scattered at all the locations.
Their services are become a necessity for individual life. People used to take hotels,
entertainment, food whenever they plan to travel for any purpose. They want a home like
feeling and all the luxurious facilities to satisfy their money worth (Tat, and Elizabeth, 2021). It
has researched that, hospitality industry was the highest contributor in the economy as it spread
in various sector like travel, leisure and entertainment. The industry has contributed 4% of GDP
in UK economy. But this figure declined due to the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.
Challenges and issues faced by Hospitality industry during Covid-19
Impact on jobs:
The hospitality industry was the highest job provider in the economy. This industry
consist many roles and responsibility which enable large job opportunities for individuals. But
due to Covid-19 pandemic, the issues arise of lowering down these job opportunities through

which economy has faced reduction in employment growth (Polemis, Tzeremes, and
Tzeremes, 2021). The hotels, restaurants, resorts and travel operators has to terminate the
existing employees due to lack of profits to pay salaries. This is the highest impact that faced by
hospitality sector. The hotels has no work to perform due to stop in guest arrivals and situation of
lock down. These hotels were not able to pay salaries to their remote workers and results in
losing many jobs in the industry. The wage pay workers, or support staffs are the one who
affected with this issues as they left with no scope to get jobs in rural areas. The companies are
reacting to this issues as per its potential in the market. Large hotel groups like IHG have huge
operations, investments and funding which impacted positively to the organisation (Joshi, and
Gupta, 2021). They reduce less number of staff and after the pandemic, they provide more
vacancies then before in the market. This challenge impact on the whole economy. Even there
will be no job, people will not have purchasing power and it will affect the economy by rising
inflation. It leaders to stop the development of the economy as well as hospitality industry. The
companies negatively to this challenge as they have n option except to terminate employees and
lowers job opportunity. Apart from this, many workers who work from other cities and home
town they could not manage to come at locations and automatically face loss in jobs.
Technology:
The world is converting its way of functioning from tradition to modern ways.
Technology is the major challenge for the small hotels and restaurants comes under hospitality
sector. Due to low technical presence, they are unable to approach large customers and attract
them to maintain their existence during lock down (Lau, 2020). At this time of Covid-19,
people become conscious about health and sanitisation due to which they prefer to digitally
active. So, many large hospitality sector have retained their customers through regular updates
on social media, emails and texts, whereas, the organisation not have much technological up
gradation, they faced a serious decline in customer engagement. Many companies are reacting
positively to this challenge as technology is being the vital need for every public as well as
business. Many hotels have provided convenient facility and 24/7 customer support to provide a
great experience and retain them for long time. But somehow, due to lack of financial stability,
some companies could not operated well with technology due to lack of staff and IT team and
maintained coordination with remote workers (Campiranon, 2021). It is also a major challenge

as many employees were working form home which become difficult for the companies to
match with their time and coordinating. This results in poor performance and looses of goals.
Financial challenges:
The hospitality industry required huge funds and investment to operate in large business
environment at global level. Due to the lock down and less customer arrival, they were unable to
attain good financial position as poor sales and profit margin. Every individual in the country
facing monetary issues which has reduce the purchasing power of buyers as well as investors.
Therefore, this industry has gone in decline of monetary funds which become the challenge to
operate in large market (Kaur, Impact of COVID-1). Finances plays a major role for this
industry due to which many problems has arrived in making expenditure, paying debs, salaries
and many more. Small sectors in this industry results in insolvency. Therefore, many hospitality
companies have response negatively to this challenge. It becomes difficult to attract investment,
allot shares and raise funds as the economy suffering from less money flow (Guillet, and Chu,
2021). Therefore, it has ascertained that this challenge is need to be overcome to secure global
presence in the market. It would affect the growth of hospitality industry and leads to great
losses.
Recommendations:
The hospitality industry is going through with many challenges during the phase of
Covid-19 pandemic. There is requirement of much control over all the global market which
affects the growth and development of this industry. As pandemic leads to lower down the while
economic potential, government support and customer engagement. So, the hotels and
restaurants needs to take effective measures to overcome with these challenges when the
situation are normal.
The companies need to prepare with prior strategy to attract customer through technology, social
media awareness, giving discounts and offers to make them influence with the unbelievable
offers.
Hospitality sectors needs to identify the current market trends in order to better influence
customers. This could be done through having proper market research to know what customers
are looking for.
The foremost function must be practice in this sector to adopt all the protocols of Covid-19.
Health and safety measures, proper sanitisation and focus on regular cleaning at hotel premises.

Travel sectors needs to look for providing travel facilities which safe and healthy and provide
accommodations suggestion who follow Covid-19 measures.
This sector need to provide food which gives energy and immunity power. This will attract large
customers as people being health concerned and avoid junks or unhealthy food.
The hotels need to re mark their global presence through regular promotions and research on the
cations of their competitors as this would impact the company in the market.
CONCLUSION
The report has concluded that hospitality industry is affected with the challenges of
Covid-19. These sectors are the one who deals in a large functioning in the market and have a
lot of departments, job roles and customer retention. It has analysed that, Covid-19 pandemic has
affected the entire organisations in UK. The situation was serious and drastic to look for the
business. Therefore, the main challenges identified due to the pandemic are loss in jobs,
technology and financial stability. Due to these challenges, the companies were unable to make
their sales, contribute in economy, fulfil customer expectation and survive in market. So, these
industry needs to take proper measures to secure their potential in the market again. It is vital to
attract customer at initial phase after pandemic ends. So. The companies could make their first
move to beat the competition in order to retain and survive in the market. To grow business
better and keep the brand name alive, hospitality industry has to use technology and digital
presence to influence large audience and providences discounts, offers very often. It is required
to make strategies and enable staff selection and hiring so the company would not face any dis
requirement.

REFERENCE
Book and journal
Kumar, M.D., Normala, S.G. and Belhadi, A., 2021. COVID-19 Impact on Leisure and Travel
Industry: Psychological, Safety and Governance Imperatives. In Virus Outbreaks and
Tourism Mobility. Emerald Publishing Limited.
Joshi, V.A. and Gupta, I., 2021. Assessing the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on hospitality
and tourism education in India and preparing for the new normal. Worldwide
Hospitality and Tourism Themes.
Lau, A., 2020. New technologies used in COVID-19 for business survival: Insights from the
Hotel Sector in China. Information Technology & Tourism, 22(4), pp.497-504.
Campiranon, K., 2021. Redesigning Events in the Post COVID 19 Crisis A Design Thinking
Approach (Kom Campiranon).
Kaur, R., Impact of COVID-19 on Hospitality and Tourism Sector in India. Hospitality and
Tourism Industry amid COVID-19 Pandemic, p.174.
Guillet, B.D. and Chu, A.M.C., 2021. Managing hotel revenue amid the COVID-19
crisis. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Polemis, M.L., Tzeremes, P. and Tzeremes, N.G., 2021. Hotels’ occupancy rates and
convergence: Empirical evidence from the first pandemic wave. Tourism Economics,
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Tat, C.M. and Elizabeth, A., 2021. Exploring Chinese students’ issues and concerns of studying
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