Tourism operator mental health and its relationship with SME organisational resilience during disasters

Abstract

Crises have a negative, and often long-lasting impact on mental health. The stress of dealing with the ongoing and unpredictable aspects of the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented rise in mental health problems including low mood, depression and anxiety. Tourism businesses have faced ongoing challenges, with repeated lockdowns and drastically reduced tourist numbers and mental health challenges faced by operators may impact the resilience of tourism organisations and vice versa. Few studies have examined this. Our study in Victoria, Australia documents the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on owners and managers (operators) of small to medium tourism businesses and explores organisational factors that may impact or protect operator mental health during the crisis. Our findings show that the mental health of the cohort reached critically low levels over the course of the pandemic. We also identify positive associations between tourism organisational resilience and operator mental health.