The Hospitality Industry's Impact on the COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case Study of Ukraine

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has had a tremendous and profound impact on tourism and related businesses, including the hotel industry. Despite the fact that in Ukraine this business does not make a significant contribution to GDP, but the presence of development potential, deferred demand and performed functions make it an important component of modern Ukrainian society. Therefore, there is a need to assess the impact of COVID-19 on the activities of hospitality entities and justify measures to restore it. The comparison of the main indicators of functioning of the tourism and hotel business of Ukraine before and during the pandemic period demonstrates significant reductions: the number of international arrivals 4 times, the number of international departures 8 times, the number of people who used the services of hotel business 3 times, the share of direct and the total contribution of this sector to GDP by 2.3 and 1.6 times. However, some businesses and late destinations, due to the rapid response to the new reality and the reorientation to domestic tourism, on the contrary, improved pre-epidemic indicators. The unpredictability and scale of the pandemics revealed structural problems of the sector and the need for coordinated activities to address them. The review of measures accepted by the state authorities of Ukraine in order to minimize the effects of COVID-19 on the tourism and hotel business by 2020 revealed their fragmentation and inconsistency. The need to strengthen the state support for this business sector and intensify public-private partnerships is justified. For the macroeconomic level, There is offered a set of institutional and state-legal measures and there is a partnership of stakeholders at the meso level and at the micro level - the systematic implementation of various innovative and digital technologies (management, sanitation, technology, communication). The selection and effective response to shortcomings and problems in the crisis period is reflected by the controller with the help of COVID-19 in the field of hospitality of Ukraine. Therefore, the partnership activities of stakeholders contribute to the innovative recovery of this field, a special place among which is the state and legal support of tourism and business: the introduction of compensation programs for owners and employees, introduction of tax bills, reduction of individual taxes, exemption from liability and / or enforcement contractual relations due to force majeure, introduction of state insurance programs to protect against the risks of pandemics.