Effective redesign strategies for tourism management in a crisis context: A theory-in-use approach

Abstract

Fundamental crises transform the tourism environment. To achieve business continuity, hotels have redesigned their operations with innovative strategies, introducing new protocols, and launching branded programs promising enhanced quality of the travel experience, by collaborating with well-known health and hygiene experts. Using a grounded theory approach, we identify three hotel redesign strategies used in practice (compliance, extensive and partnership redesign). Based on these insights, we further empirically investigate how redesign strategies affect customer perceptions. Through a quasi-experimental design, we find that service redesign influences hotel image and time frame travel. The results differ by the redesign type and the crisis dimension most relevant to tourists (social versus health), such that extensive and partnership redesign, as versus compliance redesign have a significant impact only for health-oriented individuals. Additionally, our findings highlight that redesign efforts to respond the current crisis can be perceived differently by an individual's risk perception and gender.