THE IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE HOTEL INDUSTRY

Abstract

The spread of infectious diseases to COVID-19 and quarantine conditions have significantly affected and continue to negatively affect the tourism and hotel business, so there is a need to study the impact and consequences of the global crisis on the hotel business, in particular, to create conditions for gradual loss of hotel enterprises stagnation in the industry. Hotel establishments faced new problems: lack of guests, closures, falling revenues, security of staff and guests. The hotel business will have to transform and develop further: increase the role of the Internet and social networks in shaping consumer preferences and guest behavior, integrate with online booking services, introduce online payment, open coworking in hotels, create service suites under international and local operators, search new forms of cooperation, use new technologies of doing business. More sophisticated technologies such as artificial intelligence, open software interfaces, augmented reality, the use of voice assistants, blockchain, neurointerfaces, biometrics and face recognition require significant investment, which is currently not available to hotel enterprises. If earlier hotel enterprises paid great attention to the occupancy of the room stock, expanded the range of additional services, improved the quality of guest service, now the main task for institutions is the safety of employees and guests. Regulatory documents related to the procedure for establishing categories of hotels and other facilities intended for the provision of temporary accommodation (accommodation) services need to be reviewed and updated; rules for using hotels; regulatory support in the design, construction, operation and planning in the hotel business. To mitigate the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the hotel business needs support from the state in the form of the following steps: credit vacations during the pandemic, reduction of value added tax, reduction of land tax, preferential lending. In any scenario of a pandemic at COVID-19, the hotel market will survive, but it will be transformed.