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Introduction
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has posed an extraordinary threat to the world, not least to the global economy (Jiang and Wen, 2020). The tourism and hospitality sectors have been particularly badly hit (Alonso et al., 2020) because of the high possibility of infection spreading in hospitality organizations (Shin and Kang, 2020). The unprecedented nature of the pandemic (Gössling et al., 2020) has had a crippling impact, imposing sweeping constraints on organizations such as hotels, restaurants, cafes and other hospitality facilities, leaving the industry to face severe and apparently insurmountable challenges (Alonso et al., 2020).
The main concerns resulting from the pandemic relate to its significant financial impacts, aggravated by disruption, loss of customers, the lack of clarity over the duration of the crisis and the socio-economic impacts on workers and their livelihoods (Alonso et al., 2020). For example, the pandemic has resulted in a decline in the hospitality industry of at least 50% in comparison to the previous year in almost every country (Hall et al., 2020). In the USA, for example, hotel profits declined by approximately 50% in 2020, owing to an extraordinary fall in occupancy rates (38%) (Shin and Kang, 2020). An identical impact has been found in Europe, where a monthly loss of €1bn of tourism income is estimated (European Parliament, 2020). In a recent investigation by Longwoods International (2020) regarding customer reactions to the pandemic, 66% of US tourists stated that COVID-19 would significantly influence their holiday decisions. It is anticipated that nearly 75 million jobs will be lost from the tourism and hospitality industry (Alonso et al., 2020). Worse still, it will take nearly five years for the hospitality sector to reach pre-pandemic daily occupancy rates and income (Shin and Kang, 2020). This is evidently a profound crisis that places hospitality in an exceptionally vulnerable position.
The subject of pandemic crises has attracted the attention of several scholars in the field resulting in an extant body of literature. These studies have contributed to the evaluation of crises in hospitality (Tang and Wong, 2009; Rivera et al., 2021) by addressing specific aspects of crisis management, mainly recovery (Kuo et al., 2008; Rivera et al., 2021), by or focusing on lessons learned...