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1. Introduction
COVID-19 pandemic has presented unanticipated challenges worldwide, besieged public health agencies and wreaked havoc for the economy and labour market. With the globalized world on partial or absolute shutdown, there is inestimable impact on human life, economic growth (Manen, 2020) and businesses. India witnessed the outbreak in the late January 2020 with cases mostly linked with people with a travel history to affected countries. The Modi-led government announced Janta Curfew on 22 March 2020 and complete lockdown two days later to curb the spread. Though India has been commended for introducing lockdown at an early stage (Diwanji, 2020a, b), after two months of the pandemic, the economic impact of the virus (Folinas and Metaxas, 2020) and the preventive measures have been devastating (Ozili and Arun, 2020). With no travellers as the country borders are sealed and flights grounded, the travel and hospitality industry has receded into the background.
While most economists and analysts anticipate the global economy to return to normal, the exact timelines are not yet certain (Lamba, 2020). The Indian hotel industry is struggling with significantly low demands and very few confirmed business for the future. In the beginning, transient business was non-existent and hotels had to survive on a few long staying guests, airline crews or the business prescribed by the government for international travellers returning to India. Indian hotels took a few key steps to counter the immediate economic crisis (Ranasinghe et al., 2020). This included bare minimum operations sufficient to keep the premises ready for recommencement, engaging with the service providers to redo contracts for cost benefit, developing a reopening plan and utilizing the time for preventive maintenance. The hotel industry had to reinvent itself and brace itself to the new changes that will be witnessed once the lockdown is completely lifted. Hotel management were obligated to relook into their housekeeping standard operating procedures to reinforce cleaning with sanitization and increased frequencies.
Conventionally, the hotel housekeeping managers pride themselves on being inconspicuous with high attention to cleanliness, health and safety (Wendt, 2020), as a part of their promise to the guests and staff. The pandemic has changed this and the housekeeping function is no longer about being “flawless and invisible”. The era of cleaning happening behind the...