Hospitality management innovation in COVID-19 pandemic: the problems and prospects

The crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic creates the preconditions for the innovative development of the hospitality industry. The challenges of the current stage of the industry's development force it to look for new ways and mechanisms to overcome the crisis, and in many ways they become innovative. However, innovation is often fraught with risks and costs, which is why business leaders are afraid to follow an innovative path of development. This makes the issues of innovative management of hotel enterprises particularly relevant. The article analyzes the views of scientists and experts on innovation management, its theoretical aspects, subjects, success factors of innovation and the problems of implementation in the work of enterprises. It was revealed that a great deal of attention is paid to the issues of innovation management from a theoretical point of view, but in practice there are a number of problems that hinder the use of this strategic activity for the enterprises’ development and overcoming the crisis caused by COVID-19. To identify the understanding of the need for innovative management as a development tool, the awareness of the necessity to use its individual elements in work, as well as identify the problems of its implementation in the hospitality industry, the authors of the article have conducted a survey of hotel managers. The survey was conducted by means of a questionnaire by e-mail, it was voluntary and anonymous, the questions were open-ended, which made it possible to draw several important conclusions. In particular, it was found that despite the general understanding of the need to use innovations, the answers demonstrate low interest in introducing innovations at the enterprise, about 80% of the respondents have no idea about successful innovation practices in optimizing work in a pandemic. At the same time, a number of respondents note the fact of using innovation management systems or its elements at their enterprises, know about successful practices and demonstrate their readiness to apply them, including using the form of "creative borrowing". The research results made it possible to highlight the problems of introducing innovative management into the work of hotel enterprises and outline possible ways to solve them.