The Impact of National Differences on Government Response to COVID-19 and Hotel RevPAR

The COVID-19 pandemic has a deleterious effect on every aspect of human life. Because of the government restrictions that followed, hotels were overwhelmed by the mass booking cancellations. Even though the impact of crisis has been extensively studied in hospitality literature, the role of national differences, such as political, economic and culture differences, in the recovery process remains under-researched and little is known about the tourist behavior during a pandemic. The findings of the study indicates that COVID-19 cases, economic, political, and cultural environment has a significant impact on the government response to the pandemic. Similarly, the government response, COVID-19 cases, and national culture has a significant impact on hotel RevPAR. The results support previous findings that risk perception is influenced by cultural differences and origin region of the visitors matters. Therefore, national differences should be taken into consideration while formulating recovery strategies across destinations