Communicating to Tourists During and Post-Covid-19: What Do They Want (Need) to Hear?

Swiss tourism relies heavily on international clientele to book rooms and purchase goods and services. However, from March to June 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, travel and subsequent bookings slowed and, in some cases, stopped altogether. Based predominantly on Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), this paper investigates Swiss hotels’ messages on their official Facebook pages and the SCCT strategies they employed during this crisis. The findings from 48 independent four- and five-star hotels show that the Victimage strategy was the most often employed when communicating about the COVID-19 pandemic in general. Further, most hotels published positive messages during this period (68%) and strongly emphasized their roles as victims at this time. Only 5% of the messages posted were negative messages. Hotels ‘blamed’ the government and the sanitary measures for their closing or reduced services. The findings presented here contribute to the literature by offering a pattern of crisis responses from Swiss hotels in the early period of the pandemic. These results are currently being updated with the messages communicated in the 12 months since the beginning of this study. The findings of this crisis communication during an early stage of the pandemic will be used to make concrete recommendations for the strategies that should be implemented in the future if the COVID-19 crisis continues or when faced with other crises.