Corporate Social Responsibility in Times of Epidemic Outbreaks: A Case Study from the Hospitality Industry in Spain

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is increasingly seen as a key aspect of business management. The rapid spatial spread of the COVID-19 outbreak led to border closures and mandatory mass quarantine. In this context, sectors such as the hospitality industry have been actively involved in various CSR activities, providing infrastructure and resources to help governments and societies cope with the pandemic. This study examines the different effects of CSR activities in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak, both from a business and institutional perspective. A qualitative research design has been chosen for this purpose, based on the analysis of in-depth qualitative interviews with the CEO and senior executives of three international hotel chains in Spain. The results reveal that CSR activities have contributed to containing the pandemic by helping to reduce the collapse of healthcare, as well as improving the organization's performance in terms of reputation and image. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Exploring COVID-19 Technological Impacts on Portuguese Hotel Chains– CEO´s Perspective

This paper is about the perspectives of Portuguese big players, such as hotel companies between the two lockdowns. This research intends to capt the reaction of the CEOs of the biggest hotel chains in Portugal. The aims of this research are: 1) to identify different types of impacts in the hotel sector;2) to ascertain different solutions which help to take managing decisions mainly related with technologies;3) to help creating a strategy that will leverage the economy now that this pandemic is no longer an unknown subject but still to be considered one of the biggest crises that affected the tourism sector. To assure the achievement of the referred aims a qualitative method is applied to this research. Two semi-structured interviews were applied to the most ranking hotel chains´ decision-makers in Portugal. The script was based on the Literature Review about COVID-19 and crisis impacts. The paper highlights some of the most important economic, financial impacts, technological, organizational and operational impacts that were experienced by Portuguese hotel chains during those hard times. As limitations authors identified the small sample. An extension of the sample to other hotel companies will make the results more representative.Conclusions and implications drawn are critical to improve the experience in the tourism sector after covid-19 crisis. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Managing relationships in the Tourism Supply Chain to overcome epidemic outbreaks: The case of COVID-19 and the hospitality industry in Spain.

The rapid spatial diffusion of the COVID-19 epidemic outbreak has resulted in the total economic disruption of the Tourism Supply Chain (TSC) causing a significant reduction in revenue and creating liquidity issues for all operators. Firms in TSC are linked to each other in complex patterns, leading one risk to another. The purpose of this article is to understand the role of relationship management between hotel chains and their key TSC agents in order to overcome economic disruptions caused by epidemic outbreaks. Among the main contributions of this article are the identification of governments, tour operators, and competitors as the key relationships to be managed by hospitality firms. In addition, key areas for coordination with these actors are explored. Finally, the objectives of relationship management according to the partner are also addressed.