Covid-19 impacts and strategic recovery measures of the hotel industry in Helsinki

The World Health Organization announced the covid-19 epidemic as a global pandemic in March 2020. This unforeseen outbreak of the pandemic has had a dramatic effect on the hotel industries all over the world as countries have implemented various restrictions regarding travelling and social distancing to control the spreading of the virus. Hotels have had to adapt their operations and services in accordance with the different stages of the pandemic. This research is conducted two years after the outbreak of the pandemic. The aim of this research is to produce guidelines for hotels in Helsinki so they can recover from negative impacts of the pandemic crisis as quickly as possible. This is done by finding out what the hotels have done to minimize the negative impacts of the pandemic crisis during its different stages as well as what they are doing in terms of crisis recovery. Since the outbreak, various research has been done regarding how the pandemic has impacted travel and hospitality industries around the world. This thesis provides a local perspective in the form of a case study that combines theory regarding crisis management and recent research that present strategies for crisis recovery in hotels with an empirical study consisting of five qualitative interviews with hotel managers in Helsinki. The research findings show that the hotels in Helsinki did not have time or enough knowledge to prepare for the pandemic crisis. The loss of especially foreign customers resulted in big revenue losses for the hotels. Changes in customer target groups, campaigning and inventing new attractive hotel packages that attract domestic customers have been a few ways of compensating for the revenue losses. Applying for compensation from the government has also been a way to find compensation for the losses. However, the research showed that the hotels in Helsinki have received relatively small compensations when compared to other countries. Therefore, the hotels have had to apply dramatic cost-cutting measures to survive, such as employee amount optimization, extensive layoffs, rent negotiations and putting investments and purchases on hold. This prolonged crisis has increased the importance of agility in operations as well as internal and external communication. The uncertainty of when the pandemic will ease has also been a big factor for the hotels. However, once the first wave of the pandemic was conquered, the hotels had tools to handle the following waves. All the interviewees were optimistic about the upcoming summer season, as the final restrictions were lifted during spring 2022 and customers have started to find their way back to the hotels. However, the industry is now facing a new challenge- staff shortage