Evaluating Staff Perception of Management Practices to confront Epidemics in Egyptian hotels: A case of COVID-19

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

Hotel Management, Faculty of Tourism and Hotel Management, Helwan University, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

During any crisis, the industry that suffers the most is hotel industry as it is the most sensitive to crises such as terrorists’ attacks, SARS epidemic, bird flu and COVID-19 pandemic. The present paper investigates the negative influence of epidemic COVID-19 upon both of the resorts employees and management practices in Egyptian resorts during Corona pandemic spread. The impact of COVID-19 on hotels industry in Egypt has been approached by few studies. This paper aims at evaluating staff perception of COVID-19 disease in resorts’ performances in three Egyptian coastal cities: Sharm El-Shiekh, Hurghada and Marsa Alam.  A mixed methods approach was adopted using a combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The first method was eighteen general managers of five and four resort hotels were interviewed. The research was accomplished by distributing questionnaires to 360 employees. Statistical techniques, Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H test and Simple Linear Regression, were used to test the research hypotheses. The results showed that the non-financial hotel performance during COVID-19 crisis is affected by three management practices, namely working environment, staff management and the relations with customers. Accordingly, a set of suggestions is presented to management that could be applied in resort hotel sector to minimize COVID-19 negative impacts on employees.

Keywords