Leadership Assignment: Impact Of COVID-19 On Australian Tourism Sector

Question

Task: Your task
Individually, you are required to prepare a 1500-word strategy proposal based on the assessment instructions below.

Assessment Description
The purpose of this leadership assignment is to give students an opportunity to demonstrate their skills in critical leadership, problem-solving and reflective learning relating to the tourism and hospitality industry by adopting the most appropriate contemporary leadership practices for the tourism and hospitality industries.

Assessment Instructions
Presume that you have been recently tasked to develop Australia’s next domestic (i.e., state-level) long-term tourism and hospitality strategy, with the primary focus on the issue of industry resilience. Based on your campus location (e.g., Queensland), your proposal must include the following sections:
• The analysis of current strategic and leadership risks that the state’s tourism and hospitality industry face due to the recent bushfires and/or COVID-19 pandemic.
• Evaluation of innovative business strategies that tourism and hospitality providers worldwide are currently deploying to restart their industry.
• Appraisal of the key sustainability indicators that the state’s industry must focus on to ensure preCOVID-19 issues such as over tourism, for example, will not be repeated.
• An outline of the strategy by creating new vision, mission, and long-term strategic goals drawing on the strategic corporate governance frameworks and how destination management organizations should be managed and controlled moving forward.

Answer

Introduction
The main implication of the leadership assignmentis to look into the analysis of the current strategic leadership and the risks that are to be considered within tourism or hospitality in Australia due to the pandemic conditions. There will be an evaluation of the business strategies that are helped within the industry with the inclusion of restart of the business after covid-conditions. The appraisal of the key sustainability factors that are required within the business feasibility planning after pre-Covid-19 conditions are to be considered with the working functionality of the business optimization. The outline of the strategic understanding with proper vision and mission will be provided. The assignment will provide strategic corporate governance frameworks and how destination management organizations should be managed and controlled moving forward with the business framework with a justified conclusion.

Analysing existing risks due to recent crisis
The current Covid-19 outbreak presented several challenges for the strategic management and leadership risks such as managing the human resources, health and hygiene, continuity and concerns which reflects on the implication for the decision-makers in the tourism sector and hospitality industry (Kaushal and Srivastava, 2021). Trust is a critical factor that can inspire confidence from the past behaviour among the organisations associated with the hospitality and tourism industry. The bushfire incident in Australia in 2019-2020 was one of the most severe cases where there was a casualty of 39 people 2500 homes were destroyed. The tourism, agriculture and retail sector faced a financial crisis of $1.1 billion-$1.9 billion. It is a critical challenge for the tourism industry to work with the authorities to address climate change, bushfires and manage to improve the destination infrastructure of Australia to encourage the renewal and future growth of the industry. Lack of effective leadership, sustainable practices and communication with the different stakeholders was one of the reasons fire events created a disaster that impacted the tourism infrastructure and hospitality industry. The biggest challenge of the tourism industry is to reduce carbon emission as it contributes to 75% of the overall emission in this sector (Schweinsberget al., 2020). The leadership risk can be explained concerning lack of knowledge and ability to process complex information to make informed decision-making to contain the situation of bushfire and Covid-19 in Australia. The lack of preparedness and planning can be critical for leaders when addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and bushfires creating barriers for Southern Australia. It is required to have an investment in public health or establishing National centres of public health, disease control, or infections disease to respond to sudden outbreaks and provide critical expertise to deal with the situation. Leadership risk can be pertained significantly to address the lack of relevant information and knowledge managememt regarding the crisis and developing mitigation strategies to offer the best outcomes. Adapting with the situation and coordination is required along with transparency and responsibility to show accountability while sharing risks (Ahern and Loh, 2020).

Evaluation of innovative business strategies that tourism and hospitality deployed to restart their industry globally
The most effective strategies to restart the tourism and hospitality industry is by encouraging rural and local tourism. Tourism bodies in Australia must work together to encourage the private sector to prepare for risk management strategy. Rural tourism will help to improve the quality of life of the communities and enhance economic development in the region. The RSF provides a bushfire survival plan and helps to assist the people to prepare for bushfires to prevent damage to rural tourism properties and take care of the guests (Warren, 2013). The global level economic-financial initiative can be promoted through the meetings of G20 ministers to work together to co-operate to create a safe destination for the improvement of the tourism destination in South Australia. The second measure implemented is sanitary measures in the tourism and hospitality industry through a set of protocols to reactivate safe tourism. Safety measures can be applied in the hotels and leading hospitality industries to make announcements of safe, healthy and responsible functioning following the standards set by the WHO. National initiatives will be required to support the tourism and hospitality industry through granting loans, giving tax benefits, and providing financial grants which will help to support the self-employed workers in the tourism sector (Rodríguez-Antón et al., 2020).

An innovative business model will be required in the South Australian hospitality and tourism industry to overcome the present challenges of Covid-19. Some firms in the hospitality industry have started implementing a new business model to improve the revenue stream and secure a higher level of financial strength. Some of the hotels implemented innovative practices compared to traditional services to inspire external stakeholders by developing a culture and process to systematically implement innovation and receive feedback from guests to manage the rapidly changing external conditions and installing technological advancement in the organisation. Adopting innovative model health, the organisation to achieve sustainable competitive advantage and manage the external challenges (Kaikara, 2020). In some of the organisations, training and development in other restaurants while the firm was managed by an external managing director is a possible solution. Attracting the local audience, making infrastructural changes are some of the innovative methods that can be implemented to regulate the tourism and hospitality industry (Breieret al., 2021). Innovation implemented in the hotels through service innovation has helped them to quickly adapt to the pandemic. Hotels have introduced product innovation by implementing new and advanced technology for providing safe, healthy, clean services and delivery like automated hotel checking systems using digital keys or self-service kiosk machines to manage social distancing. Several international hotel chains have started upgrading the existing technologies to implement disinfection and cleaning procedure. Implementation of automation and robots can help to reduce guest interaction and improve the cleanliness level during the pandemic situation (Sharma et al., 2021).

Appraisal of the key sustainability indicators that the state’s industry must focus on to ensure pre-COVID-19 issues such as overtourism, for example, will not be repeated
The key sustainability indicators that Australia should focus on hospitality and tourism industry are follows:

Outlining the new vision, mission, and long-term strategic goals
The development of domestic tourism will be essential to create a safety message and promotion of restorative experiences and different marketing strategies to attract tourists for effective recovery (Volggeret al., 2021).In order to address disaster risk reduction, the tourism industry in Australia needs to closely work with the local government to integrate effective policies in strategic regions. Improvement will be required in the public sector and government level to propose reforms by developing a mission shared among multi-level organisations implementing shared objectives to maintain effective legislation and clear objectives through collaboration (Petrova et al., 2018). It can be done by establishing a cooperative funding mechanism that will encourage partnership among the government sector and local community stakeholders to mitigate and respond to climate change, bushfires and enhance the tourism and hospitality sector in Australia (Forinoet al., 2017).

Vision- The most desirable attractive destination globally
Mission -To enhance the tourism and hospitality sector by identifying the values to guide the vision and deliver commercial results through innovation

Long Term Goals-Promote a sustainable and competitive tourism industry by recovering from the bushfire crisis and Covid-19 by limiting the tourism expenditure, maintaining brand health and restoring the business events pipeline. Managing the outdoor recreation industry will contribute to the development of Australia. Managing the adventure companies or outdoor recreation will help to promote employment, development of the economic region, improve income and the organisations to take clients to recover from the significant losses. The organisations have to work with 77.4% of employees and had to terminate highly competent and experienced workers to manage the financial implications (Spennemann and Whitsed, 2021).

Using destination management will help to align the strategies to create programs aligned with the policies and diversify and portfolio of events to appeal to the customers from a global profile (Hristov and Zehrer. 2019). Collaboration from the local community and the government will be required to develop synergies. Effective strategy making and planning from the government it will enhance the tourism and hospitality industry in Australia creating an operational and successful implementation of an event to maximize long-term benefits (Ziakas, 2019).

Conclusion
The factors of the covid conditions are provided with the strategic governance and vision and mission of the business strategies are provided. The manifestation of the strategic governance of the tourism and hospitality industries of Australia is provided with proper understanding. The necessities that are required within these businesses are dependent on the circular economy with the engagement of the leadership and managerial practices that will help in the growth of the industries. The evaluation of the risk factors with the sustainability index are provided within the assignment.

References
Ahern, S. and Loh, E., 2020. Leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic: building and sustaining trust in times of uncertainty. BMJ Leader, pp.leader-2020.
Breier, M., Kallmuenzer, A., Clauss, T., Gast, J., Kraus, S. and Tiberius, V., 2021. The role of business model innovation in the hospitality industry during the COVID-19 crisis. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 92, p.102723.
Forino, G., von Meding, J., Brewer, G. and Van Niekerk, D., 2017. Climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction integration: strategies, policies, and plans in three Australian local governments. International journal of disaster risk reduction, 24, pp.100-108.
Hristov, D. and Zehrer, A., 2019. Does distributed leadership have a place in destination management organisations A policy-makers perspective. Current issues in Tourism, 22(9), pp.1095-1115.
Kaikara, O., 2020. Tourism development strategy. International Journal Papier Public Review, 1(1), pp.20-25.
Kaushal, V. and Srivastava, S., 2021. Hospitality and tourism industry amid COVID-19 pandemic: Perspectives on challenges and learnings from India. Leadership assignmentInternational journal of hospitality management, 92, p.102707.
Petrova, M., Dekhtyar, N., Klok, O. and Loseva, O., 2018. Regional tourism infrastructure development in the state strategies. Problems and Perspectives in Management, (16, Iss. 4), pp.259-274.
Rodríguez-Antón, J.M. and Alonso-Almeida, M.D.M., 2020. COVID-19 impacts and recovery strategies: The case of the hospitality industry in Spain. Sustainability, 12(20), p.8599.
Schweinsberg, S., Darcy, S. and Beirman, D., 2020. ‘Climate crisis’ and ‘bushfire disaster’: Implications for tourism from the involvement of social media in the 2019–2020 Australian bushfires. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 43, pp.294-297. Sharma, A., Shin, H., Santa-María, M.J. and Nicolau, J.L., 2021. Hotels' COVID-19 innovation and performance. Annals of Tourism Research, 88, p.103180.
Spennemann, D.H. and Whitsed, R., 2021. The impact of COVID-19 on the Australian outdoor recreation industry from the perspective of practitioners. Journal of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, p.100445.

Villacé-Molinero, T., Fernández-Muñoz, J.J., Orea-Giner, A. and Fuentes-Moraleda, L., 2021. Understanding the new post-COVID-19 risk scenario: Outlooks and challenges for a new era of tourism. Tourism Management, 86, p.104324.
Volgger, M., Taplin, R. and Aebli, A., 2021. Recovery of domestic tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic: An experimental comparison of interventions. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 48, pp.428-440.
Warren, C., 2013. Encouraging Rural Tourism to embrace Bush Fire Risk Management through business and visitor improvement strategies. Australia: International Centre for Responsible Tourism.
Ziakas, V., 2019. Issues, patterns and strategies in the development of event portfolios: Configuring models, design and policy. Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events, 11(1), pp.121-158.