The COVID-19 pandemic and organisational commitment of senior hotel managers

The COVID-19 pandemic will reduce the attractiveness of hospitality occupations. This particularly concerns senior management positions whose holders may substitute hospitality jobs with more secure and rewarding employment in other economic sectors. Organisational resilience of hospitality businesses, including their response to COVID-19, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices may, however, affect perceived job security of senior managers and, thus, influence their commitment to remain in their host organisations. This paper quantitatively tests the inter-linkages between the above variables on a sample of senior managers in hotels in Spain. It finds that the levels of organisational resilience and the extent of CSR practices reinforce perceived job security of managers which, in turn, determines their organisational commitment. Organisational response to COVID-19 affects perceived job security and enhances managers’ organisational commitment. To retain senior management teams in light of future disastrous events, hotels should, therefore, strengthen their organisational resilience and invest in CSR.     

Responses to COVID-19: The role of performance in the relationship between small hospitality enterprises’ resilience and sustainable tourism development

Tourism is one of the hardest-hit industries by the global pandemic of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19). Small tourism enterprises have been heavily affected and have had difficulty in business recovery. This research is an early attempt to explore the direct impact of small hospitality enterprises’ resilience on sustainable tourism development as well as indirect impact through performance. A pre-tested questionnaire survey was self-administered to owner-managers of small hospitality enterprises in Greater Cairo, Egypt. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) using AMOS showed a positive, direct, and significant impact of resilience (planned and adaptive) on sustainable tourism development and indirect influence through performance. The results of the multi-group analysis showed that enterprise type has a significant effect on the results, where restaurant owner-managers expressed more resilience than their hotel counterparts. Several theoretical (for scholars) and practical implications for tourism policy-makers and owner-managers have been discussed and elaborated.     

A novel profit cutting mechanism for Chinese Banks: Theory and Multi-dimensional evidence

As China’s macroeconomic growth faces increasing pressure from the global COVID-19 pandemic, a surprising and politically controversial phenomenon has emerged: the profitability of banks in China exceeded that of enterprises and non-financial industries. The People’s Bank of China and regulatory authorities have hence taken measures to incentivize banks to transfer part of their profits to enterprises, with the aim to stabilize enterprises and employment. This paper proposes a novel profit cutting mechanism focusing on loan structure adjustments to address the limitations of the current approach centering on lowering loan interest rates. The theoretical and empirical analysis show, at both the macro and micro level, that an increase in the proportion of credit loans can benefit the development of enterprises without weakening banks’ operating performance in the long term, leading to a Pareto improvement within enterprise-banking sectors. The findings suggest that banks in China should gradually adjust their loan structures by providing greater credit loan access to enterprises, either voluntarily or directed by policy.     

Ability and willingness to work during COVID-19 pandemic:Perspectives of front-line hotel employees

This research note reports the results of a qualitative study exploring front-line hotel employees’ views about working during the COVID-19 pandemic in order to identify factors that may influence their ability and willingness to report to work. Findings from online focus-groups reveal that front-line hotel employees generally felt a sense of duty to work during the pandemic. However, there were also a number of perceived barriers to working that impacted on this sense of duty. These emerged as barriers to ability and barriers to willingness, but the distinction is not clear-cut. Instead, most barriers seem to form a continuum ranging from negotiable barriers to insuperable barriers. Following this coneptualisation, the key to reducing absenteeism during the pandemic is likely to take remedial action so that barriers to willingness do not become perceived as barriers to ability to work. Practical implications towards this direction are offered.     

A $10 million question and other cybersecurity-related ethical dilemmas amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Cybercrime and cybersecurity are like two sides of the same coin: They are opposites but cannot exist without each other. Their mutual relation generates a myriad of ethical issues, ranging from minor to vital. The rapid development of technology will surely involve even more ethical concerns, like the infamous example of a fitness tracking company allegedly paying $10 million worth of ransom. Every cybersecurity solution, tool, or practice has to be ethical by design if it is to protect people and their rights. To identify the ethical issues that cybersecurity/cybercrime might bring about in the future, we conducted the first broad and comprehensive horizon-scanning study since the COVID-19 pandemic arose. As we began this project, nobody had the slightest idea that the coming months would bring the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the reality we had known was about to change dramatically. As it soon became apparent, the deadly coronavirus brought completely new cybersecurity/cybercrime ethical dilemmas to light, and some of the ones known before were transformed or shifted. This article presents the results of our horizon-scanning study concerning the ethical dilemmas that emerged amid the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Unusual purchasing behavior during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic: The stimulus-organism-response approach

During the COVID-19 pandemic, unusual consumer behavior, such as hoarding toilet paper, was reported globally. We investigated this behavior when fears of consumer market disruptions started circulating, to capture human behavior in this unique situation. Based on the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework, we propose a structural model connecting exposure to online information sources (environmental stimuli) to two behavioral responses: unusual purchases and voluntary self-isolation. To test the proposed model, we collected data from 211 Finnish respondents via an online survey, and carried out analysis using PLS-SEM. We found a strong link between self-intention to self-isolate and intention to make unusual purchases, providing empirical evidence that the reported consumer behavior was directly linked to anticipated time spent in self-isolation. The results further revealed exposure to online information sources led to increased information overload and cyberchondria. Information overload was also a strong predictor of cyberchondria. Perceived severity of the situation and cyberchondria had significant impacts on people's intention to make unusual purchases and voluntarily self-isolate. Future research is needed to confirm the long-term effects of the pandemic on consumer and retail services.     

Government and social trust vs. hotel response efficacy: A protection motivation perspective on hotel stay intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study conceptualizes a research framework to explain and examine customer intentions regarding hotel stays during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 700 U.S. consumers via a crowdsourcing website in July 2020. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data for testing proposed hypotheses. The analytical results showed that the level of threat perceived by customers significantly reduced their intention to stay at a hotel. On the contrary, individual customer response efficacy significantly enhanced their intention to stay at a hotel. Additionally, both government and social trust, as well as hotel response efficacy, were found to significantly increase hotel stay intention by mediating the effects of threat perception and individual response efficacy. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to apply PMT to explain customer hotel stay intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

A comparative study of eight COVID-19 protective measures and their impact on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions

A comparative vignette-based experimental survey design incorporating various socio-psychological factors, linked to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the Health Belief Model (HBM) and the Domain-Specific Risk-Taking scale (DOSPERT) was carried out to test variations in eight travel-related COVID-19 protective measures on Swiss tourists’ travel intentions. Among the tested measures, vaccination passports, surgical masks and quarantining are those that stand out the most, with surgical masks having the greatest acceptance and willingness to adopt while traveling. Quarantining, on the other hand, appears to have a deterrent influence on travel intentions, and vaccination passports have the lowest perceived barriers during travel, but the highest perceived benefits in mitigating the spread of the infection. The discussion of individual differences has specific implications for tourism management against the background of our empirical findings.     

Measuring imported case risk of COVID-19 from inbound international flights --- A case study on China

With COVID-19 spreading around the world, many countries are exposed to the imported case risk from inbound international flights. Several governments issued restrictions on inbound flights to mitigate such risk. But with the pandemic controlled in many countries, some decide to reopen the economy by relaxing the international air travel bans. As the virus has still been prevailing in many regions, this relaxation raises the alarm to import overseas cases and results in the revival of local pandemic. This study proposes a risk index to measure one country's imported case risk from inbound international flights. The index combines both daily dynamic international air connectivity data and the updated global COVID-19 data. It can measure the risk at the country, province and even specific route level. The proposed index was applied to China, which is the first country to experience and control COVID-19 pandemic while later becoming exposed to high imported case risk after the epidemic centers switched to Europe and the US afterward. The calculated risk indexes for each Chinese province or region show both spatial and temporal patterns from January to April 2020. It is found that China's strict restriction on inbound flights since March 26 was very effective to cut the imported case risk by half than doing nothing. But the overall index level kept rising because of the deteriorating pandemic conditions around the world. Hong Kong and Taiwan are the regions facing the highest imported case risk due to their superior international air connectivity and looser restriction on inbound flights. Shandong Province had the highest risk in February and early March due to its well-developed air connectivity with South Korea and Japan when the pandemic peaked in these two countries. Since mid-March, the imported case risk from Europe and the US dramatically increased. Last, we discuss policy implications for the relevant stakeholders to use our index to dynamically adjust the international air travel restrictions. This risk index can also be applied to other contexts and countries to relax restrictions on particular low-risk routes while still restricting the high-risk ones. This would balance the essential air travels need and the requirement to minimize the imported case risk.