The medium to long-term effects of the COVID pandemic on the management practices of five star hotels in Malta

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic was the recent and still ongoing worldwide crisis that happened in the last two years causing businesses to work with reduced hours or permanently closing doors. In addition, the pandemic led to restriction of people’s movements by local governments imposing compulsory lockdowns and shutting down countries’ operations in order to reduce the spread of the disease. The tourism industry in this matter was not an exemption considering that the sector is one of the major contributors towards national development. Furthermore, the sector enables foreign exchanges between countries as well as creating job opportunities, which is a key element in nation’s economic development. In fact, many countries consider tourism as a crucial sector for their countries’ economies attempting its further development and attracting higher touristic flows as it can be observed on the Maltese islands. The sector is considered as a major contributor to Malta’s GDP leading to impacting local businesses and workers. Therefore, it is important to preserve the tourism meanwhile safeguarding the public health in times of pandemic such is Covid-19 (Agius, 2020). This research mainly focused on the coronavirus and how it affected the Maltese tourism sector. The main core of the study was to identify coronavirus medium to long-term practices implemented by five star accommodation facilities located on the island. First and foremost, the research examined the topic and analyzed in details the study which was carried out. Furthermore, the results were obtained with an aid of in-depth interviews conducted with five local managers. With regards to the questionnaire it was build up in order to be presented to the target interviewees. Following that, the questions related to coronavirus practices were more emphasized by the researcher and the interviewees in order to extract the necessary data. Consequently, the main findings extracted from this qualitative research presented how hoteliers, following local guidelines, continuously attempt to guarantee guests’ safety by introducing innovative practices in order to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic. However, despite an introduction of these innovative practices, people still consider travelling as unsafe activity so far due to constant changes in local and international regulations to enter certain destinations. Therefore, Maltese hoteliers hope that with the current ongoing vaccination program, people will regain trust in safe travelling in the foreseen future for the purpose of obtaining experiences and leisure activities, but till then it would be the matter of surviving on the market and overcome the pandemic.