DOI - Mendel University Press

DOI identifiers

DOI: 10.11118/978-80-7509-820-7-0377

COVID-19 Pandemic and Economic Sustainability of Tourism and Hospitality: The Impacts on SMEs in the Czech Republic

Petr JANEČEK, Petr ŠTUMPF, Lukáš PICHLÍK, Ida RAŠOVSKÁ


Purpose: COVID-19 pandemic has brought a lot of changes in socio-economic environment as well as the business environment. The hospitality and tourism industry suffers enormously from the COVID-19 pandemic and government restrictions in all countries. The behaviour of the whole tourism system in post-COVID-19 period is still unclear and the economic sustainability of the tourism sector is put at risk, not only due to the outflow of human resources from the industry. The tourism and hospitality service providers face to the biggest crisis of the industry in last decades. This paper focuses the impacts of the pandemic on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and compare their crisis behaviour in several segments, such as accommodation services, catering services, and tour operators (TO) / travel agents (TA) in the Czech Republic.
Design/methodology/approach: A quantitative survey was carried out from May to September 2020 and the sample consists of 208 valid responses, especially from SMEs owners and managers.
Findings: The results show how the enterprises in different segments reacted on the crisis, which measures they implemented in the first six months of the pandemic and what they planned to do in marketing, HR, and financial management.
Research limitations: Results are focused only on the hospitality businesses and tour operators and travel agents. There are only limited research sample covered in our research. Results are not general for all businesses in tourism industry.

Keywords: COVID-19, tourism, hospitality, SME, Czech Republic

pages: 377-387, Published: 2021, online: 2021



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