Hospitality in the post-Covid19 era – Leveraging the mobile interface

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused severe disruption in the hospitality industry. Movement restrictions (e.g., border closures, and lockdowns) led to the cancellation of most leisure and business bookings. Now, as the vaccination programme expands to more and more age groups, and the UK prepares to come out of national lockdown, companies in this sector need to win back customer confidence. For instance, in Wuhan, residents and tourists continued to avoid hospitality venues long after the lockdown was lifted, due to fear of reinfection (Chen and Che, 2020). Businesses need to overcome two types of consumer fear: 1) fear that venues are unsafe (Hazée and Van Vaerenbergh, 2021); and 2) fear that local restrictions will limit the leisure options available (Which, 2021). Businesses can address the first fear by communicating to customers which venues follow the upmost industry safety standards, such as Visit Britain’s “We’re good to go” scheme (2020). To address the second fear, businesses can curate and share with customers information about which venues are open (e.g., restaurants, museums) and which activities are taking place (e.g., tours, outdoor events), so that customers can make the most of their journey. That is, by communicating clearly and effectively with their customers, hospitality venues can gain back their confidence (Bove and Benoit, 2020). Several mobile phone apps have emerged, recently, to help individuals feel – and be – safe (Heinonen and Strandvik, 2021). For instance, Snapchat’s My Social Distance app allows users to maintain a safe distance from others by measuring the space between themselves and others in their proximity; while the NHS Covid-19 app alerts users to possible exposure to the SARS-Cov-2 virus through contact tracing. The role of these (and other) apps in allowing the easing of movement restrictions, and keeping customers safe, suggest that there is an opportunity for hospitality businesses, too, to use this technology to communicate with customers, in order to overcome their fears and, therefore, initiate recovery from the economic crisis induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, this project aims to: A. Identify the information needs of hospitality guests, to overcome their fears related to the use of hospitality venues. B. Assess effective ways of signalling venue safety and range of local options available, to address the needs identified in A. C. Determine the specification of a smartphone App to deliver the messages defined in B. D. Pilot the app designed in C, and develop recommendations for further development.

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