Employing Value Chain Theory To Address COVID-19 Outbreak In Tourism Management: A Resilience and Stakeholder View

The COVID-19 outbreak is causing severe damage to the tourism sector. Gradual restrictions are imposed by the world’s governments to improve social distancing and control the number of infected people. It creates a collapse in the tourism demand showing an unusual situation. The paper, after an in-depth analysis of the literature on the tourism value chain, aims to investigate actions and perspectives which influence tourism management in this challenging period. The study uses grounded theory to determine significant elements regarding the management of tourism. Through forty semi-structured interviews with individual people, the paper proposes a model of tourism restart based on value chain theory. The model finds out five relevant factors: tourist attractiveness (i.e., tourism flows, the composition of tourism flows, proximity tourism and coronavirus opportunities), receptive factors (i.e., new receptivity models, health, and prevention models), new business models (i.e., home delivery services, flow management applications, outdoor sports activities), digital divides (i.e., enhancement of the internet structure) and culture (i.e., new outdoor activities). This study contributes theoretically to the value chain theory establishing a model for tourism regeneration. Additionally, the paper gives new practical insights in terms of resilience activities that tourism entrepreneurs could implement for tourists.