Impatto e possibili conseguenze della pandemia di COVID-19 sul settore alberghiero

The COVID-19 Pandemic is a global event, which produced effects on the World economy which at the moment, with the pandemic still not over, are estimated to be worse than the other major crises occurred in the last hundred years. As is well known, one of the most affected sectors, if not the most affected sector, was tourism. The limitation of the possibility of travel, during the lockdowns that the different nations have imposed, or in some cases are still imposing, on their residents, as well as the existing restrictions for travel, have in fact produced devastating effects on the realities belonging to the tourism sector. Among these, the hotel industry has had to face a crisis with crushing impacts at a time when the traditional hospitality system had already entered a phase of rethinking. This was due to the revolution in the way of interpreting hospitality brought about by the system of non-hotel accommodation, in particular that based on the application of the principles of the sharing economy. AirBnb, a global giant of the tourist offer, is the most significant example of this revolution. The important pace of growth with which these realities have been imposing themselves in the tourism market had already led to the need for hotels to review some fundamental features of their business models, emphasizing certain elements of customer relationship management, applying increasingly more sophisticated revenue management and cost reduction systems and using the possibilities offered by new technologies for more effectiveness of these strategies. This work introduces first an analysis on the problems of the hotel sector already existing before the current crisis, based mainly on a literature review. Then, the article tries to analyze what could be the possible consequences for hotels in the scenario that will possibly emerge in the months and years to come. Moreover, in this part an empirical study will carried out. Precisely, because the key perspective of analysis is related to the future of the hotel industry, the empirical research has involved six young hoteliers who own hotels in six different regions of Italy. In carrying out the research, each of them was involved through the submission of a semi-structured research interview aimed at understanding their points of view on the ongoing evolution of the hospitality sector, the possible changes to be introduced (in relation to structure and size of business, role of human resources and management innovations) and the impacts and consequences of the crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic.