Adaptive Resilience of Hospitality Enterprises: Key Practices Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic

Hospitality enterprises are prone to frequently encounter adverse events, such as the recent outbreak of the pandemic of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), as they operate in a turbulent and uncertain business environment as well as provide services of a vulnerable nature. Hence, the adaptive resilience of hospitality enterprises has captured the attention of both academics and practitioners. Drawing on insights of hospitality executives and hotels' key performance indicators, this study seeks to assess the perceived adaptive resilience of the hospitality enterprises to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to identify the key practices learned from this pandemic concerning improving the adaptive resilience of hospitality operations. A mixed-methods approach was adopted in this study using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative data was gathered using semi-structured interviews with 31 hospitality executives and data was analyzed using the thematic analysis technique. Meanwhile, document analysis was adopted to conclude quantitative data from official reports of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. The findings revealed that hospitality enterprises showed limited adaptive resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic and took a prolonged time to slightly recover and restore business. However, experiencing such an unprecedented disruptive event drove hospitality enterprises to undertake various adaptive practices to withstand this pandemic and maintain reasonable business flow such as services diversification, resources reconfiguration, creative solutions, and attentive leadership. This study contributes to the growing literature on hospitality management and provides valuable suggestions for practitioners.