MEASURES TAKEN BY THE HOTELIERS TO OVERCOME THE COVID-19 IMPACT

Abstract

The hotel industry which supports the tourism industry, plays a crucial part in Malaysia’s economic development. Unfortunately, the outbreak of COVID-19 has caused the tourism industry to make huge losses, both locally and globally in terms of cancellation of all travel and tour activities, including accommodations. Many researchers have attempted to highlight the effects of COVID-19 pandemic on various sectors, however limited studies have been conducted to address how the hospitality industry can mitigate this situation to recover and revive the hospitality industry. Recent reported figures lack of empirical and academic underpinning. This paper aims to fill the gap. It is thus imperative to examine the measures being taken by hoteliers in order to overcome this unprecedented scenario. Therefore, this study’s aim is to highlight the measures taken by the hoteliers to overcome the impact of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in terms of staff employment, working terms and hotels’ loss of revenue. A qualitative research method was deemed appropriate to investigate this scenario. The data collection was founded based on the Grounded Theory approach and feedback was collected through semi-structured interviews among 15 staffs from the Food and Beverage, Accounts and Front Office departments which were selected using purposive sampling from five different hotels in Penang. The findings showed that all of the respondents have come to the agreement that the measures taken by their hotels to overcome the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of staff employment and work conditions were to lower the hotel operations costs. This was done by reducing the number of employees and reducing staffs’ salaries. Other measures taken by the hotel management to mitigate the pandemic’s impact include increasing room sales, venturing into other services, and extending bookings for events. The findings of this study have some practical implications for hoteliers as they can adopt similar strategies in their respective hotels as a means of coping with impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.