Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic paused international tourism posing millions of
tourism businesses a historical challenge of surviving and recovering. Tourism
businesses in Sri Lanka are composed 60% of small and medium-scale
businesses (SMEs), including homestay operators. For this segment of
business, surviving and recovering is even a challenge as many businesses
represent informal sector and some of them are not registered businesses. As a
result, these businesses face difficulties in obtaining benefits from relief
packages offered by the government. However, the way tourism businesses
survive during crises is not well explored. Accordingly, this research focuses on
homestay businesses and interested in exploring those business operators’ 1)
survival strategies during the shut-down period caused by COVID 19, 2)
experience of and satisfaction with social and governmental supports that they
received, and 3) recovery strategies planned for in the post COVID tourism
scenario. This research is significant given the fact that not many researchers
have inquired into exploring lived experiences of tourism operators’ survival
and recovery strategies in the face of crisis. In Sri Lankan context, limited
research can be found in relation to the issues and challenges faced by SMEs
when recovering from crises, except for a limited research related to
recovering from Tsunami disaster in 2004. A qualitative explorative research
approach is proposed as this inquiry requires exploring personal
interpretations of respondents’ experiences, strategies adopted, and recovery
plans. This research expects to make theoretical contribution to the knowledge
regarding the survival and recovery strategies of tourism SMEs during the
times of crisis. The knowledge generated can have implications in making
plans for preparing SMEs for facing crisis situations in tourism.
