Hear No Virus, See No Virus, Speak No Virus: Swiss Hotels’ Online Communication Regarding Coronavirus

Crises have been defined as “unpredictable events that can disrupt an organization’s operations and threaten to damage organizational reputations” [5]. The priority in any crisis is to protect stakeholders from harm; therefore, public safety concerns should precede any reputational concerns [6]. Stakeholders will attribute responsibility of the crisis to the company, which can be grouped into three categories: Victim (weak attributions of organizational responsibility such as natural disasters or rumors), accidental (low level of responsibility such as challenges or technical-errors), and preventable (high level of organizational responsibility such as human-error or organizational misdeed) [7]. As industries are the victims of the Coronavirus pandemic and could do nothing to avoid it, the response strategies for managing this crisis will be based on the victim category.

According to Coombs Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT), for each of the attribution clusters mentioned, there are communication strategies to employ to protect company reputation in three ways: 1) shape attributions of the crisis, 2) change perceptions of the organization, and 3) reduce the negative effect generated by the crisis [8]. When the organization has been attributed with weak responsibility as seen with the Coronavirus, the organization should implement an ethical base response consisting of instructing information (i.e., explaining the crisis to the stakeholders) and adjusting information (i.e., helping stakeholders cope with the crisis). However, it could also include bolstering messages such as ingratiation (i.e., praising stakeholders for efforts they have made) and victimage (i.e., reminding stakeholders that the organization is a victim of this crisis) [9]. Unlike bolstering, which focuses on communicating past good works a company has done, enhancing includes telling stakeholders about the company’s current good works [10]. In the Coronavirus case, this could entail communicating the new safety measures put in place for both the employees and the customers. This paper examines how SCCT crisis responses were communicated online, particularly the enhancing strategy, by Swiss 4 and 5-star, independent hotels.

Previous studies have examined crises in the hospitality industry that have significantly impacted specific properties or areas. From war and political instability to crime, terrorism, and health epidemics, safety concerns are a significant predictor of travel intentions [11]. Swiss hotels have circumvented major crises thus far. Their recent crises have included little or no snow during regular ski seasons, a hailstorm that destroyed some vineyards, and the financial burden of a strong Swiss franc. While researchers have recommended that hotels post messages regarding the crisis, irrespective of the crisis level, on their websites so that potential customers will read these messages when connecting to make their reservations [12], some hotels are reticent for fear of lowering the interest in their properties if their customers read messages about a crisis [9], particularly a health crisis like the Coronavirus. This study analyzes how many hotels effectively communicated these messages in the de-confinement stage of Swiss hospitality.

Previous studies have examined how and what companies communicate with their stakeholders in times of crisis. Specifically, in the hospitality industry, researchers have examined social media use through social media such as Twitter or Facebook and traditional media during crises. One study focused on the tourists’ risk perceptions associated with health amongst others to gauge how frequently tourists resort to social media to gather their information to find that international tourists with high-risk perceptions had a high likelihood of seeking information through social media channels during a crisis [13]. The perception, particularly of risk associated with crises, can be mediated by using social media to give information and address the human needs of conversation and compassion [14]. Nonetheless, international travelers are more vulnerable due to linguistic communication, culture, and varying levels of social media savvy, which may affect their choice to use social media to seek information in the event of a crisis [15]. As Switzerland is dependent on international travel for their tourism, particularly for hotel occupancy, this study will analyze the messages on both the official hotel websites and their Facebook pages and address the following two research questions:

RQ1: What are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers communicating on their official websites regarding the Coronavirus?

RQ2: Are Swiss 4 and 5-star independent hoteliers using social media to communicate about the Coronavirus crisis?

The official hotel websites offered a varied amount of information regarding the Coronavirus. Figure 2 shows the relationships between the words in the messages found on the hotel websites. Twenty-nine of the hotels had a direct message, sometimes a pop-up, which appeared on their homepage regarding Coronavirus or Covid-19. Word pairs such as ‘federal office,’ ‘federal public,’ ‘federal health,’ ‘office health,’ and ‘office public’ appeared 12 times in the official hotel website messages. ‘Disinfect hands’ and ‘wear protective’ appeared 13 times before ‘wear masks’ and ‘wear mask’ (at 12 and 10 times, respectively). The highest number of word pairs was attributed to ‘guests employees’ (23 times), followed by ‘hygiene measures’ (18 times), ‘hotel guests’ (17 times), ‘safety measures’ (16 times), ‘health safety’ (15 times), and Public health’ and ‘public areas’ (14 times). The number of unique pairs was 363, with an average pair frequency of 4.440771 and pair entropy (or level of uncertainty or randomness) of 5.765317.

For the frequency of individual words, the most common word in the messages were ‘guests’ (126 times). The word ‘hotel’ (81 times) was followed by ‘employees’ (58 times), ‘safety’ (53 times), ‘measures’ (52 times), ‘hygiene’ (40 times), and ‘distance’ (34 times). The majority of the individual words were tabulated less than ten times. Out of 440 unique words, 342 (77%) were used less than ten times in all of the messages combined. The average word frequency was 8.1, and the entropy was 5.690377.

The messages on Facebook were also analyzed both for the individual words used and the word pairings. Figure 3 shows the relationship between unique words (71) found in the Facebook posts. Only three word pairs appeared ten or more times in the analysis: ‘forward welcoming’ (15 times), ‘forward back’ (10 times), and ‘dear guests’ (10 times). As seen in Fig. 3, trio relationships can be seen through words such as ‘safe,’ ‘health,’ and ‘employees,’ ‘welcome,’ ‘back,’ and ‘soon,’ and ‘love,’ ‘Switzerland,’ and ‘Zurich.’ The only words that specifically refer to the Coronavirus pandemic were ‘health’ and ‘safety.’ The average pair frequency was 4.450704, and the pair entropy was 4.174661.

Figure 4 shows the results from the hashtags associated with the Facebook comments.

As seen in Fig. 4, the relationships between the words used in the hashtags were also examined. Relationships were established between ‘Switzerland’ and ‘love’ and ‘stay’ and ‘home.’ Only ‘stay’ and ‘home’ could be linked to the current Coronavirus pandemic. Further, just ten unique word pairs appeared less than five times in the hashtags (average pair frequency of 3.2). The pair entropy was calculated as 2.295203. The individual words found in the hashtags resulted in 20 unique words for an average word frequency of 4.15 and entropy of 2.91938.