Revisiting Hotel Brands in West Bengal: An Assessment for Confidence Building of Leisure Tourists amidst COVID 19 Pandemic

Abstract

Hospitality Industry in India is considered as Sunrise Industry as it has registered a huge potential for future growth. The tourism and hospitality sector is having a steady growth and accounts for 7.5 percent of the country’s GDP. According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF), 4.2 crore jobs were created in tourism and hospitality sector as of 2019 which was 8.1 percent of the total employment of the country. Though the hospitality sector has the potential to be the major reason behind the growth of the economy, yet the COVID-19 pandemic has wrecked this as never before. Now it is critical whether the hospitality industry in the study area will move ahead or drop down by losing the market share. In this unparallel and unforeseen situation of low occupancies and higher fixed costs, correct and cost effective brand strategies are not only essentials but imperative as well. This article is an attempt to build confidence of popular hotel brands in selected cities and hill stations of tourism importance in West Bengal. An opinion survey is conducted for identifying areas and issues of confidence building for selected hotels with wide ranging facilities and services. An effort is also put forward to move towards quality of life (QOL) in hotel branding. Principal component analysis, structural equation modeling (SEM) and ideographic ranking methods are used as quantitative tools for measuring data.