Effect of COVID-19 pandemic: tourism and hospitality industry

Karan Mehta, Chetan Panse. Effect of covid-19 pandemic: tourism and hospitality industry. Cardiometry; Issue 22; May 2022; p. 406-414; DOI: 10.18137/cardiome-try.2022.22.406414; Available from:

In December 2019, China reported an outbreak of a disease called COVID-19 in the country to WHO 406 | Cardiometry | Issue 22. May 2022

(World Health Organization), which spreads through a virus called coronavirus; this disease has a similar symptom as pneumonia on the human body, i.e., fever, tiredness, and dry cough, it spreads from one person to another by the droplets of the person’s nose or mouth, the virus was so powerful that when a person who is already COVID positive sneezes around someone else who is not infected with the virus then the risk of the person who is not infected with coronavirus increase to become COVID positive (Government of Karnataka, 2020). So, the chances of spreading the virus increased by touching the surface and object because the coronavirus’s capacity to stay active on any object is up to 72 hours (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2020). Because of such strong capacity, the virus started spreading quickly amongst China as well as overseas. The spread of the virus affected millions of people worldwide. Thousands of people died within the first quarter of the year 2020. By March 11, 2020, WHO declared COVID-19 as a global pandemic due to such dramatic effects? August 14, 2020, coronavirus has infected 21 million people worldwide, and 7, 58,102 people have died due to COVID-19 (World O Meter, 2020).

Different Countries in the world faced different problems during this pandemic time; even the medically advanced countries cannot save themselves from this pandemic.

2020 if we compare it to the data of 2019; in world tourism, 67 million fewer international tourists have traveled till March 2020, which resulted in the loss of US$80 billion. If the situation remains the same, then this can result in a loss of 850 million to 1.1 billion international tourists, which will economically affect a loss of US$910 billion to US$1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism. If we talk about the job market, then 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs are at risk worldwide because of COVID-19; this is by far the worst crisis that international tourism has faced since 1950 (World Tourism Organisation, 2020).

WTTC data shows the significant impact of the recent COVID-19 outbreak on the Travel, Tourism, and hospitality sector with analysis and to survive in these times, WTTC has also asked different countries whose tourism and hospitality industry has a major share in their GDP to be prepared with their recovery plan to minimize the impact, WTTC is also suggesting different modifications in the industry, such as individual country should remove the barriers they have put on traveling right now to increase the number of arrivals, different kind of incentives should be provided to the industry, relief in the tax payments should also be provided, hotel and restaurants should create more tourist-friendly environment. Hence, tourists feel safe to visit their place in the time of the pandemic (Economic Times, 2020).

1.1    Indian tourism and hospitality industry

Figure 1 shows the Indian tourism and hospitality industry is a mixture of 5 different forces.

India is known for its cultural diversity; it is a mixture of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Islam, and Christianity [1]. India attracts local tourists as well as tourists across the globe for its heritage and cultural diversity. There are 38 world heritage sites in India, which

Fig. 1. Indian tourism and hospitality industry is a mixture of 5 different forces.

increases international tourism in the country, stated Kumar. Tourism and hospitality Industry of India is known for country’s rich culture, historical and heritage places, along with different climates in different cities, and because of this attractions the Indian hospitality and tourism industries have grown as one of the main drivers of nation’s development in India’s services industries, and large number of people are working under tourism and hospitality industry to make it a critical driver for country’s growth, which makes tourism a major employment generating industry along with increasing foreign exchange in the country, as of 2019 8.1 per cent of the country ‘s overall workforce was provided by tourism and hospitality industry, The figure is projected to increase by two per cent annually to 52.3 million jobs by 2028, and because of such large contribution, India is considered as a country whose tourism and hospitality industry contributes a significant amount of share in its GDP and As per WTTC, India placed 3rd in 2018 as regards the overall contribution of tourism and hospitality industry to GDP; India even placed 34th in the 2019 World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report (Indian Brand and Equity Foundation, 2020) [2].

According to the data (The Ministry of Tourism-2019) [3], in India, 31.30 million people traveled between Jan 2017-December 2019, out of which10.04 million people traveled in 2017, 10.56 million people traveled in 2018 with a growth of 5.2% in the number of arrival and 10.70 million people traveled to India in 2019 with a growth of 2.2% in the number of arrivals, tourism and hospitality industry does not depend on the people who visit India for holiday and leisure [4]. However, other sectors also have an essential contribution towards the total revenue generation of India’s tourism and hospitality industry. The classification of those sectors can be done according to the purposes of tourists visiting India, so the classification of the purpose of tourists visiting India in the year 2019 is as shown in Table 1:

Table 1

The purpose of tourists visiting India in the year 2019

Number of People Travelled in 2019 (10.70 Million)	Purpose of Travel
62.40 %	Holiday and Leisure
16.30%	Business and Profession
16.30%	Indian Diaspora
6.1%	Medical
1.7%	Unknown Reasons

(Ministry of Tourism, India, 2019)

The tourism and hospitality industry is considered as one of the key drivers of the country’s economy because the Indian tourism and hospitality industry’s total contribution towards India’s GDP was 15,24,000 crores (US$ 234.03 billion) in 2017, which is expected to rise to 32,05,000 crore (US$ 492.21 billion) by the end of the year 2028; which says that India’s tourism and hospitality industry contributes approx [5]. 7% to its total GDP and COVID has put major setback in the process of reaching 16% by the year 2028, it is expected that the tourism and hospitality industry will recover faster than the country’s GDP once the pandemic is over, but till then it has become a challenge for this industry to survive in this pandemic time, also at the end of 2019, the tourism and hospitality industry of India was ready to expand its existence of tourism and increase the growth as well as its contribution to the GDP without any worry of a threatening pandemic to the Indian tourism and hospitality industry [6]. However, the entry of COVID-19 in December 2019 ruined the plans and strategies designed to grow the tourism industry and its plan to achieve one percent share in the world’s international tourist arrivals by 2020. Moreover, the Indian government planned to achieve a target of 20 million international tourist arrivals and increase the earnings from the foreign exchange by the end of the year 2020. However, even that strategy did not work due to COVID-19 (News Vibes of India, 2020).

1.2    Effects on tourism and hospitality industry

When the year 2020 started, India was all set to boost its tourism and hospitality industry towards further development and growth by increasing its share in India’s GDP and providing more jobs. However, the Indian tourism and hospitality industry was not aware of the adverse effect of this global pandemic COVID; India confirmed its first case of COVID in Kerala in the first month of 2020, which is also one of the favorite international tourism locations by Kumar. After that, slowly and gradually, the virus started spreading across the country and resulted in thousands of deaths [7]. So, on March 21, 2020, the Indian government imposed rules and regulations like lockdown and social distancing in the country, affecting every possible industry, including the tourism and hospitality industry, due to the lockdown of the whole nation, the international and domestic travel was banned across the country, the Social distancing and lockdown imposed by the government due to COVID-19 involved acts like eliminating community gatherings, preventing public areas, limiting domestic as well as international journeys [8]. Eventually, it also significantly affected how people encounter and assess relaxation and tourism experiences such as hiking, sporting activity, ecological tourism, and even individual facilities such as spas, dining, concierge services, social distance, or even physical distance can affect tourists’ opinions of medical hazards, vulnerability and negative travel activities, observed Sigala [9].

The Indian tourism and hotel market is extremely labor-intensive and one of the main actual and potential work producers, as well as one of the several capital-intensive industries that need a significant amount of their capital allocated as cash flow, meanwhile this same sector gives job to great amount of people, and the hotel owners are responsible for looking after those workers in this time of the pandemic, which includes the payment of salary and safety from COVID-19 of people working in the premises on regular basis, on the other hand people are not willing to travel to save themselves from coronavirus, which resulted in to cancellation of customer’s international and domestic tours and hotel booking as well as demand for refunds which created a lack of cash flow in the business because new income is not generating in this time of the pandemic, and that is the primary reason why the working capital is draining rapidly, and many of the people working under tourism and hospitality industry are losing their jobs (HOSPIBUZ. COM, 2020) [10].

Indians usually travel in April to July, October, and December for a holiday, whether it is domestic or international. In the same season of 2019, almost 28 million people traveled internationally, and 1.8 billion people traveled within the country; on the other hand, the same April to July holiday season of 2020 took an enormous hit of about 80 to 100% due to the spread of the virus, only people who had to travel for their job or profession are traveling and that too in an indispensable condition otherwise most of the multinational companies has given work from home to its employees, and because of that important portion of earning for the airline industry and hospitality industry through people who were traveling for work got stopped. Those who were providing cruise tourism experience are completely on standby; no interna- tional or domestic festivals and events are happening. Many people used to travel around (Tourism Breaking News, 2020) [11]. Also, the experience of tourism differs from person to person, the way of providing service by the service provider plays an essential role in overall tourism experience, it influences major factors like customer’s taste, point of view, emotions, but after COVID-19 the way of providing the services has to change because now the customer would be looking at the things differently, e.g., service providers will have to focus more on cleanliness, maintaining social distance in the premises, extra safety measures for possible medical emergencies, which will eventually increase the cost for respective hotel and restaurants , as observed by Bakar & Rosbi, and this extra cost is necessary because customers’ way of looking at the service provided to them is a major factor on which the success of a business depends, before COVID-19 customer’s priority while judging the hotel was fragrance in the hotel, interior, easy connectivity, Wi-Fi access, complimentary services, play zones and things like that, but the pandemic has changed the mentality and point of view of the people, now they are looking for things like sanitization of the facility is done on regular basis or not, emergency medical services are available or not, what safety precautions are taken by the hotel, what steps they are taking to make their customers safe from COVID-19, social distancing is maintained inside the hotels and restaurants or not, this way this pandemic changed the people’s perception of looking at tourism and hospitality industry, studied Assaf & Scuderi. Moreover, the price of the services will also increase due to many obvious reasons like maintaining more cleaning than the usual and regular sanitization in the premises, use of PPE kit at several places, they will also have to partly refurbish their premises to maintain the norms of cleanliness and safety from COVID-19, allotment of rooms would also be much lesser than the usual days to maintain social distancing in the premises, and all these factors will eventually increase the cost to respective hotels and restaurants;

And all this planning of strategies and changes can be applied after government allow the tourism and hospitality to open their services for customers but before that, in this pandemic time the hospitality industry needed to find an alternative to generate the revenue for surviving, and to do that slowly and gradually many hotels started providing future bookings at a discounted rate, and different vouchers, like one hotel in Shimla, was providing a booking window of 1 year, which means a person can visit the hotel at any time till the end of 1 year from booking date; also many hotels started converting their premises as a quarantine centre, they started giving rooms to COVID positive patients for 14 days to quarantine themselves in their hotel, like Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) permitted 60 hotels in Ahmedabad to convert their premises into quarantine centres and that created a cash-flow in the business to survive, and because of COVID-19, this new innovation to survive came in hospitality industry (Pranav Mukul, 2020) [13].

2    Research methodologies

The proposed research of how COVID-19 is affecting the tourism and hospitality industry is the combined approach of both qualitative and quantitative research approach; the sample size of the research is 473, which represents people from different age groups, gender, profession, and income group, in this research, we are considering sanitization and safety measurements taken by hotels, restaurants and tourism cities to analyze the approach of customers towards tourism and hospitality industry after the pandemic, and to do so we conducted an online survey by using google forms as a tool of data collection, the conducted survey was not restricted to any gender or income group or profession, people from all the groups were allowed and included to be a part of this research. While sending out survey forms, we included general questions like gender, occupation, age, level of education, yearly income, what used to be their choice of location for a holiday before COVID-19, how much they yearly spent on holiday, how they plan their holiday trip, to understand the basic details and reliability of participants, also we did not ask the name of a participant to maintain the anonymity and privacy of a participant, which helped us to get an accurate data [14].

Further, we asked participants to rate the following safety and sanitization measurements on a Likert scale of 1 to 5, where one was not important. Five are most important to understand the importance of safety and sanitization parameters from the customer’s perspective and test the hypothesis [15].

Questions asked on Likert scales:

• •    Government’s Approval about the particular place is safe to visit, travel, and stay.

410 | Cardiometry | Issue 22. May 2022

• •    Compulsory for hotel staff to wear PPE kits while providing service to the customer.

• •    Compulsory to wear masks and gloves for every hotel staff member while talking to customers or providing service to them.

• •    Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.

• •    Sanitization of the hotel facility regularly.

• •    Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.

• •    Availability of Emergency Medical Service at hotels and cities.

• •    Temperature Record of every guest and staff member entering the hotel.

• •    COVID-19 test of staff regularly.

• •    Use of the Arogya Setu app while checking into the hotel.

• •    Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy. • A gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at the restaurant.

Hypothesis:

Several papers were providing qualitative analysis of the same research question. However, some of them focused more on tourism and less on COVID-19, while some were focusing more on COVID and less on tourism [17]; there was a lack of balance between the two factors. Moreover, they all were qualitative studies, and no quantitative data was used to prove their assumptions and suggestions are reliable. However, there is a possibility of some gaps in this research due to a lack of understanding of respondents regarding this research topic and misunderstanding the questions asked in the survey [18]. However, the analysis through Friedman survey shows that the parameters we have taken in this research have a significant effect on the tourism and hospitality industry after the pandemic [19].

Friedman’s test is used to test the difference between different parameters. Here, we have compared the mean rank of all the 12 parameters of safety and sanitization, in which Out of all the 12 parameters, three particular parameters, 1) Compulsory for every staff member to wear mask and gloves, 2) Sanitization of the facility regularly and 3) Availability of emergency medical services has higher mean rank than the others, through which we can derive that these three parameters are the most important factors that tourists look for when they are visiting any hotel, restaurants or tourist city under tourism and hospitality industry after the COVID-19 pandemic [20].

3 Result and discussion

Table 2 shows that sanitization of the facility regularly has a high mean score of 4.56, followed by Avail- ability of Emergency Medical Service with a mean score of 4.53. Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels has meant a score of 4.51. It shows that this three statement has high significant and preferred more by the respondents. Use of the Aarogya Setu app while checking into a hotel has a mean score of 3.92 has the minimum score. Al the other statements have a mean score of more than 4.

Table 3 shows that sanitization of the facility regularly has a mean rank score of 7.35. Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels has rank means a score of 7.17. Third, comes Availability of Emergency Medical Service

Table 2

Non-parametric tests

	N	Mean	Std. Deviation	Minimum	Maximum
“Indian Government’s Approval on Safe to Visit Tourist Place.”	473	4.31	1.006	1	5
“Compulsory for staff to wear PPE kits.”	473	4.13	1.116	1	5
«Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	473	4.51	.941	1	5
“Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.”	473	4.29	1.014	1	5
“Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	473	4.56	.891	1	5
“Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.”	473	4.37	.978	1	5
“Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	473	4.53	.868	1	5
“Temperature Record of every guest entering the hotel.”	473	4.42	.969	1	5
“COVID test of staff regularly.»	473	4.40	.949	1	5
“Use of Arogya Setu app while checking into the hotel.»	473	3.92	1.254	1	5
«Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy.»	473	4.32	.955	1	5
“Gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at restaurant”	473	4.44	.896	1	5

Table 3

Friedman test

Ranks
Parameters	Mean Rank
“Indian Government’s Approval on Safe to Visit Tourist Place.”	6.29
“Compulsory for staff to wear PPE kits.”	5.71
«Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	7.17
“Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.”	6.20
“Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	7.35
“Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.”	6.50
“Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	7.16
“Temperature Record of every guest entering the hotel.”	6.76
“COVID test of staff regularly.”	6.61
“Use of Aarogya Setu app while checking into a hotel.»	5.15
«Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy.»	6.35
“Gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at restaurant”	6.75

has means score rank mean score with 7.16. It shows that the above three statements have a high rank mean score when compared to other statements.

The ranks of these three marked parameters are coming high as compare to others. So, we want to test it further if there lays any statistically significant difference. we applied a post hoc test called “Wilcoxon Signed Ranks Test. “Since we have 12 groups in total, there would be 66 comparisons in all, and hence the new p-value would be 0.05/66 = 0.00076 (Bonferroni Correction)

Table 4 shows that there lies a difference among these rankings given by the customer. We have applied the Non-Parametric Friedman test here.

Statement on ethical issues

Research involving people and/or animals is in full compliance with current national and international ethical standards.

Table 4

Wilcoxon signed rank test

	z	Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)
“Indian Government’s Approval on Safe to Visit Tourist Place.” - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-5.840b	.000
“Compulsory for staff to wear PPE kits.” - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-8.694b	.000
“Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.” - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-6.267b	.000
“Sanitization of the facility regularly» - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-1.531c	.126
“Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.” -«Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-5.042b	.000
“Availability of Emergency Medical Service” - “Compulsory to wear masks and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-.432c	.666
“Temperature Record of every guest entering the hotel.” - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-2.625b	.009
“COVID test of staff regularly.» - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-3.406b	.001
“Use of Aarogya Setu app while checking into a hotel.» - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-9.695b	.000
«Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy.» - «Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-5.028b	.000
“Gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at restaurant” - “Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.»	-2.421b	.015

Table 5

Wilcoxon signed rank test

	z	Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)
“Indian Government’s Approval on Safe to Visit Tourist Place.” - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-8.814b	.000
“Compulsory for staff to wear PPE kits.” - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-8.814b	.000
“Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.” - “Sanitization of the facility regu-larly.»	-7.794b	.000
“Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.” -“Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-6.019b	.000
“Availability of Emergency Medical Service” - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-1.165b	.244
“Temperature Record of every guest entering the hotel.” - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-4.466b	.000
“COVID-19 test of staff regularly.» - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-4.845b	.000
“Use of Aarogya Setu app while checking into a hotel.» - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-10.698b	.000
«Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy.» - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-6.462b	.000
“Gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at restaurant” - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-4.435b	.000
«Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.» - “Sanitization of the facility regularly.»	-1.531b	.126

Table 6

Wilcoxon signed rank test

	z	Asymp. Sig. (2-tailed)
“Indian Government’s Approval on Safe to Visit Tourist Place.” - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-5.838b	.000
[Compulsory for staff to wear PPE kits] - «Availability of Emergency Medical Service.»	-8.615b	.000
“Use of disposable menu as well as crockery items at restaurants.” - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-6.231b	.000
“Compulsion of Wearing Mask for Guests staying in the hotels and other accommodation units.” -“Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-4.960b	.000
“Temperature Record of every guest entering the hotel.” - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-3.768b	.000
“COVID test of staff regularly.» - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-3.974b	.000
“Use of Aarogya Setu app while checking into a hotel.» - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-10.445b	.000
[Use of digital money to maintain the zero-touch policy.] - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-5.818b	.000
“Gap of 2 to 5 meters between two tables at restaurant” - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-3.189b	.001
«Compulsory to wear mask and gloves for every staff member of hotels.» - “Availability of Emergency Medical Service”	-.432b	.666
[Sanitization of the facility regularly] - «Availability of Emergency Medical Service.»	-1.165b	244

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Author contributions

The authors read the ICMJE criteria for authorship and approved the final manuscript.