Prediction of corporate financial distress in the travel and tourism industry

Abstract

Currently, most countries in the world endure financial distress due to the ongoing economic crisis. Thus, financial distress prediction (FDP) has become vital in speculating the business continuity for the corporate world. In the context of Sri Lanka, the travel and tourism industry has been highly exposed to political, economic and climate (weather) shocks, as well as being sensitive to the impacts of COVID-19. Along with those shakes the recent economic crisis and the need for FDP led the researchers to empirically investigate the discrimination zones, i.e., distress zone, grey zone, and safe zone of the travel and tourism industry in developed and developing countries. This study adopted Altman’s (1968) original Z-score model for data analysis. This research is based on secondary data from annual reports of 138 listed travel and tourism companies listed on the stock exchanges of developed and developing countries: the USA, Australia, Singapore, South Africa, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka during the five-years period (2016–2020). The purposive sampling method is used to obtain the secondary data for the study. The finding revealed that 96.38% of travel and tourism companies are in the distress zone, 2.90% grey zone, and 0.72% safe zone in developed and developing countries. This study recommends all the travel and tourism companies in developed and developing countries maintain enough retained earnings to avoid corporate failure. This study is significant since it evidences the FDP and signals the global economic depression.