Hospitality’s response to Covid-19: Welcome back to the new ‘abnormal’!

Measured the effectiveness of the messages communicated on Facebook and official websites of Swiss 4 and 5-star hotels at all stages of the Covid-19 pandemic over 14 months (June 2020 to August 2021) Key words and phrases were isolated and analyzed via Leximancer to identify common themes and trends when communicating with clients. Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) was applied to gauge the crisis communication strategies hoteliers used. Content analysis and sentiment analysis were used to analyze the messages communicated during the 14-month period of closing, opening, closing, and re-opening again through the 4 waves of the Covid-19 pandemic that Switzerland has endured. Results: Swiss 4 and 5-star hotels used the renewal strategy and corrective actions more than any other strategy over these 14 months. This differed from an earlier study on the same group of hotels where victimization was the key strategy used. The results of this project will be shared with general practitioners in crisis communications (regardless of the industry) as well as hotel industry practitioners (to directly apply to their properties).