Industries around the world have been impacted differently by the Covid-19 global pandemic.

While some of them saw a decline in revenue due to their inability to be flexible, others have
succeeded in adapting their business models to the crisis and minimize the losses. We will
compare an industry that has been heavily impacted in Europe (Tourism) to another one that
mitigated its losses (Retail). First, we are going to identify how each sector reacted to the
crisis. Second, we will towards identifying the differences inside each sector and the different
levels of reactions. Third, the idea is to determine which factors shaped each sector's
reactions. Lastly, we will try to propose complementary solutions for each sector.

When it comes to the tourism industry, we can say that it’s a sector that gets easily impacted
by crises and uncertain contexts. This has been proven in the world generally (Hall, 2010) in
events of crises such as the 2008 worldwide financial meltdown, as well as within Europe and
France specifically for example, where factors such as geopolitics (Sarrasin, 2004) and
terrorism (Denécé and Meyer, 2006) threaten the sector consistently. Although these events of
crises had their fair share of impacting the industry, tourism actors never considered drastic
changes and the industry’s unsustainable business model continued to resurface.

This has been the case until 2020, where many consider Covid-19 to be the pandemic that
plunged the sector in a crisis so bad that the idea of structural adaptation started to seriously
circulate around. The sector is basically no longer able to bear crisis effects and change is
needed. It should be noted however that although the consequences of crises are of the same
form, meaning that they all plunge economies and make several businesses suffer, the focal
point is usually different.

The so-called focal point in this context is what the crisis makes impossible. We can say that
the focal point of the 2008 financial crisis was international economic contagion (Luchtenberg
and Vu, 2015) and turned around the impossibility to conduct transactions and sustain
businesses. Whereas the 2020’s Covid-19 pandemic’s focal point turns around elements such
as the difficulty of travelling and holding events that require physical presences. This is a
double-hit for the tourism industry; business weakening and jeopardization of the one element
(physical presence and grouping) around which the current tourism business model is built.

This is exactly what Emmanuel Briant, Marc Bechet, Charly Machemehl, and André Suchet
discuss in the “Utopies d’un tourisme en renouvellement, 2020” paper, arguing that the
consequences of the pandemic situation are pushing actors in the tourism industry to consider
concepts such as social, sustainable, and local tourisms. Their idea is that the geographical
limits that a pandemic obliges (quarantine policy) should push us to think of Covid-19 as an
opportunity to enhance local tourism and render all its elements valuable through empowering
locals and encouraging sustainability. As a group, we are as well studying the effects of the
pandemic on the tourism industry and we’re trying to imagine future scenarios for it, which
makes this paper valuable and applicable to our research context.

As for the retailing industry, the pandemic’s impact is considered to be multi-faceted,

meaning that it influences several aspects such as but not limited to: inventory stock, supply
chain management, delivery systems, equipment maintenance, marketing strategies and
customers attraction. Facing this challenge, online shopping generates more value to both
customers and retailers more than ever.

From the perspective of retailing entities, online sales matter a lot for their survival and
prosperity before, during, and after the global pandemic. And for the online sales, omni-
channel distribution strategy is undoubtedly essential for its long-term success, which
manifests its value especially during COVID-19. The omni-channel can be defined as a
seamless experience for customers, benefiting from the integration of online and offline sales
to add customer value (Larke, Kilgour and O’Connor, 2018).

However, the difficulty of undertaking the omni-channel strategy is also widely recognized
such as a huge capital investment, a rigorous existing infrastructure and system, and a highly
demanding market, so many multi-channel retailing entities would opt to establish
touchpoints leveraging their existing resources, a more efficient and less costly method than
omni-channel (Larke, Kilgour and O’Connor, 2018). From the perspective of customers,
customer behavior patterns and psychology became more related on the online sales model
after Covid-19.

For example, customers pay more attention to online promotion like product package design;
they have learned to distinguish between essential goods and luxury goods, they care more
about the cleanliness of shopping mall, and they are more sensitive to the price set by retailers
for online goods (Roggeveen and Sethuraman, 2020). Therefore, during COVID-19, retailers
must be cautious about their online brand portfolio dedicated to customers’ experience
improvement, such as distribution channel, pricing, and promotion. This is especially the case
if these entities want to survive and thrive through the global pandemic.

The reasons behind the different impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the Retail and Tourism
industry are different. The retail industry mainly struggles with its logistics : the supply and
the maintenance delivery system for example. When it comes to the Market, depending on
how each retail company organizes its channels, the effects of the crisis can be mitigated ; The
more channels you have, the less you will be able to respond to the crisis, because you will
need more effort to adapt to e-commerce. Online retail companies also depend more on Price
and Packaging, because some other aspects of the Mix-Marketing cannot be available online
(the most obvious example being Malls). In comparison, the tourism industry has less
flexibility in maneuvering the crisis, because it is based on elements such as physical
presence, contact, and travel, which are all being restricted right now. One possible solution
could be to focus on local, smaller tourism. Hence our research question, “Covid-19 economic
impact: variations in reactions and responses between Tourism and Retailing in Europe”.

References

Hall, C. M. (2010). Crisis events in tourism: subjects of crisis in tourism. Current issues in
Tourism, 13(5), 401-417.

Sarrasin, B. (2004). Risque politique et tourisme: Nouveautés et continuités. Téoros. Revue de

recherche en tourisme, 23(23-1), 12-22.

Denécé, É., & Meyer, S. (2006). Tourisme et terrorisme. Ellipses, Paris.

Luchtenberg, K. F., & Vu, Q. V. (2015). The 2008 financial crisis: Stock market contagion
and its determinants. Research in International Business and Finance, 33, 178-203.

Briant, E., Bechet, M., Machemehl, C., & Suchet, A. (2020). Utopies d’un tourisme en
renouvellement. À propos des adaptations en cours dans les destinations touristiques
confrontées à la crise sanitaire prolongée de la COVID-19 en France. Téoros. Revue de
recherche en tourisme, 39(3).

Larke, R., Kilgour, M., & O’Connor, H. (2018). Build touchpoints and they will come:
transitioning to omnichannel retailing. International Journal of Physical Distribution &
Logistics Management.

Roggeveen, A. L., & Sethuraman, R. (2020). How the COVID-19 pandemic may change the
world of Retailing. Journal of Retailing, 96(2), 169.

Pantano, E., Pizzi, G., Scarpi, D., & Dennis, C. (2020). Competing during a pandemic?
Retailers’ ups and downs during the COVID-19 outbreak. Journal of Business Research, 116,
209-213.

N.B: the two references in Italic style are the main ones that were used for the literature
review.