Collaborative Operations of Hospitality Industry during COVID-19 Lockdown and Strategic Approach with reference to Bangalore, India

Abstract

The pandemic attack of Coronavirus had lurch the entire world to massive crisis of human illness, fatality, insecurity in family, business instability, and downfall of the economy resulting into huge number of job loss and pay cuts.  The inadvertent consequences of COVID-19 started showing its effect since end of December 2019 and were observed in India predominantly by the end of February 2020 onwards. The focus of the study was to find the COVID-19 impact on hospitality industry in India before and during the first lockdown and its collaborative operations with special reference to Bangalore. The methodology incorporated in the study was the descriptive approach through the qualitative method and the purposive sampling technique was utilised. It is evident that the hospitality industries is the hardest hit, as the tourists’ travel and stay plunged to an average of -60% change of occupancy data compared to the same period in 2019 in India according to the STR reports.  Due to this VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) environment the hospitality industry has initiated some of the collaborative operations to render their services to the society and generously assisting the government bodies. It is observed that the strategic collaborative frameworks can reduce the industry jolts during such disasters.