Is It Enough to Merely Survive in Hong Kong Tourism Industry? A study of Resilience in Times of Crisis

Over the last decades, the topic of resilience has received increased attention from scholars and practitioners. A substantial amount of the literature defines it as the capability that allows an organization to make sense of, and continuously adapt to exogenous and endogenous sudden changes with potentially heavy negative consequences. The current pandemic crisis has generated a steep wave of global economic and social recession with unprecedented consequences. Although the COVID-19 pandemic, has placed significant pressures on Hong Kong’s aviation, tourism, hotel, hospitality, and retail sectors amidst stringent border controls and government-mandated social distancing measures; Hong Kong remains one of the perfect benchmarks in grasping opportunities and overcoming the challenges during crisis time.
This study aims to bridge organizational and entrepreneurial theories to depict the strategies utilized to build resilience by organizations from the most heavily affected city’s industry. In doing so, the authors employ a phenomenological approach to build a small number of case studies to consolidates insights across academic disciplines and to provide a starting point for a more nuanced discussion on the application of resilience strategies and their character during crises.