Exploring How the Hotel Businesses Faced Covid 19 Case Study: Hotel Businesses in East Nusa Tenggara Province Indonesia

This research aims to explore how the hotel businesses in East Nusa Tenggara Province faced Covid-19 through the perspective of the hotel management. Case study methodology was used in this research with document analysis and interview as data collection tools. The interview data was analyzed using thematic analysis method to find general themes of how the hotel businesses faced Covid-19 pandemic. Loss revenue was the main impact of Covid-19 pandemic as a result of declining of occupancy rates and the absence of government events due to travel and activities restrictions of government policies. However, to keep surviving, the hotel management created a new marketing strategy by focusing on local guests as well as applying high standard of health protocols. The hotel industry also received financial support from the government and financial aid for the employee trough cash transfer. Due to the limitation of research time and restrictions, this research only focus on hotel businesses located in Kupang City. Therefore, the result of this study cannot be generalized to all hotel businesses which located in other regions in East Nusa Tenggara Province. This research contributes to enrich business management study specifically the business strategy of hotel and hospitality management during Covid-19 pandemic.