Adaptation Strategies to COVID-19 on The SHA Standard Hotels of Entrepreneurs in Bangkok Metropolitan Area in 2020

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic leads to restriction on international travel to consider the progress of disease control. This situation has crucially affected to hotel industry in Thailand, especially in Bangkok, which is the most visited city for tourists and used to a major industry that generates revenue from foreign tourists significantly. Most of hotels have to temporarily close, nevertheless, some of them finding strategies for adaptation during this crisis including the principal standard certified by public health regulation and tourism standards called Safety & Health Administration (SHA) for preventing risk of infection with COVID-19 to assure the domestic tourists. This research aims to study adaptation strategies to COVID-19 on the SHA Standard Hotels of entrepreneurs in Bangkok Metropolitan Area. The conceptual framework has 4 parts including 1) hotel’s appearance and operation 2) effect of COVID-19 3) adaptation strategies and 4) problems during adaptation

The results of the study revealed that, 1) SHA hotels have a similarly convenient location. The average Small Hotel life expectancy is lower than Middle Hotel and Large Hotel for over 10 years. 2) The significant factors in hotel adaptation were temporary close date and the average change of room price which illustrated the alteration for reducing expenses and taking relevant revenues. The decrease in average room price was consistent with the economic depression. Moreover, each hotel needs to have various strategic plans to deal with and looking for new methods to increase profit by using the existing assets. However, some of them closed temporarily to abbreviate the regular expenses. 3) SHA is a certificate that improving the sanitation measures in preventing the spread of COVID-19 which may not involve with hotel management, but it can cause the indirect effect of public awareness from authority’s sanitation measures supplement to hotel standards.

This research demonstrates the concept of hotel entrepreneur’s strategies to cope with COVID-19 situation and the adaptation by various methods which brings about the guidance for hotel entrepreneurs to prepare and propose the appropriate plans for their organization, especially the hotel industry that is most affected by this epidemic. This research could hotel entrepreneurs by using this data to raise the awareness for next crisis in the future.