ABSTRACT
This book chapter aims to analyze the impacts of COVID-19 Pandemic on the tourism sector in Juiz de Fora (Brazil) based on the perspective of organizational ecology. The main argument developed here is that the pandemic has imposed a new condition over all the existing firms through two main forms: 'selecting' the survival firms through an extreme and severe scarceness of resources by a long period, and then, acting over the remaining firms imposing them a diverse set of strategies and actions to 'adapt' themselves to the 'new conditions. A field research was conducted between October 2020 and August 2021 focusing on the inter-organizational relationship among some important structural components of the tourism supply chain (lodging, food, travel agencies, cultural equipment, and transportation firms). Methodologically, a case study method was used to guide the mixed research, with a random but not stochastic sample of 66 firms, whose data were analyzed qualitatively by Content Analysis and quantitatively by Descriptive Statistics. The results show that 15% of the firms have closed the operations [selection variable] due to the pandemic;all remaining firms needed to adapt themselves in terms of legal compliance (restrictive laws), managerial practices (human resources and labor routines) and strategies (new technologies and new markets) [adaptation variable];also, all of the remaining firms have kept their business in online mode, total or partially, even in the current period of pandemic decline [retention variable]. We conclude that all companies needed to reinforce their attention on the external environmental impositions to a greater or lesser degree. © 2023 Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.