Covid-19 Pandemic and Entrepreneurial Marketing Response Strategies for Hospitality Industry Recovery in Nigeria

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on the domestic, regional and international tourism industry with colossal losses in revenue in all the tourism value chains. One of the hardest hit is the hospitality sector. Decline in leisure culture, ban on individual and corporate travel occasioned by the lockdown have manifested in near-zero occupancy rate, decline in patronage, loss of revenue and facility shut-down in the hospitality sector. However, with the gradual easing of the lockdown in the domestic travel sector, the hospitality market is expected to regain its footing in the latter part of this year (2020) and next year (2021). The paper adopts the chaos theory and dynamic capability framework and argues that COVID-19 has become a metaphor for business threats and turbulence with serious negative effects as expressed by business pause and low patronage. Entrepreneurial marketing which is more preferable in times of uncertainties can help the sector mitigate the effect of the pandemic and survive by regaining customers’ trust and confidence through standard safety/hygiene measures. The paper suggests technology–based innovation/creativity, exploration of new market opportunities, value creation through added packages, customer intensity through customer relationship management and improvement in customer service delivery in unconventional manners. The paper concludes that the ‘new normal’ created by the COVID-19, though not desirable, is however, a test for hospitality managers to rethink new ways of doing business as their survival depends on their response strategies.