The effect of Covid-19 on the Performance of Hotels: a Case of Jimma Town

Abstract

Hotel industry businesses play vital role in development of economy of the country. However, this business can fail because of uncertainty to the future. Therefore, studying of Hotel businesses gives opportunity for learning from previous mistakes and improve the decision making process. The concept here is to take advantage of the failure and turn the negative feeling around by analyzing what went wrong and correcting it for the future. The general objective of this research entitled “The Effect Of Covid-19 On the Performance Of Hotels: A Case of Jimma Town” was to assess and analyses the effect of Covid-19 On the Performance Of Hotels. The study considered 4 hotels and 92 participants were selected using simple random sampling method and Was collected and the result was analyzed using linear regression model .Thus, inferential statistical method like correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between the effects and hotel performance. The study found that the independent variables explain 11.2% of variance of the dependent variable hotel performance . As per the regression result, from all variable employee commitment has the highest beta (β=0. 181) value which specifies the most governing effect in determining hotel performance; the customer attitude effects (β=0.137) So, for a certain variation in each independent variable as stated above, there was a consistent variation in the hotel performance. That is, employee commitment predicts the hotel performance by 18.1%. and customer attitude predicts hotel performance by 13.7%.The researcher recommend the following recommendations based on the findings of the study. The finding of this research shows that hotel performance needs the factors that facilitates its growth. So hotels should make sure that there is a team work in the organization, employees keep guests safe and are committed to meet organizational objective, whether or not the resources are efficiently used and to attract customers by changing their attitude towards the hotel that can be done by serving customers with fair price, offering quality service and giving good hospitality. When in the case of covid-19 the hotels should put hand washing material, obligate their employees to wear mask and to keep distance, afford sanitary materials for their employees and also starting take away service if it is necessary. Additionally it is necessary to inform their customers to keep their distance while spending time in the hotel.