Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of hotel safety leadership on employee safety behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the mediation role of belief restoration and the moderation role of perceived risk between safety leadership and behavior were also investigated. Design/methodology/approach The COVID-19 outbreak served as the background for a questionnaire survey of 23 hotels in China with 1,594 valid responses being received. The statistical analysis techniques used were exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, structural equation modeling and hierarchical regression. Findings The results showed that: hotel safety leadership positively affected employee safety behavior (compliance, participation and adaptation); belief restoration partially mediated the influence of safety leadership on safety behavior; and perceived risk negatively moderated the direct effect and the mediation effect of “safety leadership – belief restoration – safety behavior.” Research limitations/implications The main limitation was that the questionnaires were collected with the same measurement system within a certain period of time (cross-sectional design). Then, future research should test and expand this conceptual model in different crises, business fields, theoretical orientation and cultural backgrounds. Practical implications Hotels should develop management strategies based on safety leadership and motivate and promote employee safety behavior from the four aspects of safety coaching, care, motivation and control. Originality/value This investigation expanded the research on the effectiveness of safety leadership and especially with respect to safety in the hospitality industry during a major global crisis. Also, the research conceptual model and variables contained therein are original contributions to the hospitality research literature.

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A gap exists in the research on how online media frame a tourism crisis and its effects on travel intentions. This research proposed a basic crisis frames model for public online communications including nature (N), causes (C), processes (P), and results (R). Chinese online public opinions on the Thailand drownings in 2018 were collected and the Vector Auto-Regressive (VAR) technique explored the responses within the data. The results showed that: (1) the crisis frames had a dynamic impact on negative travel intentions, and the effects and variance contributions of frames differed; (2) disturbance information produced by a negative communication incident from the destination was a factor promoting the accumulation of online public opinions; and(3) online data of public opinions and the VAR model are appropriate for research about tourism crisis information communication. This research provides new insights and a method for investigating tourism crises and dynamic responses in online communication.

Safety for tourists at places visited is essential to their enjoyment and experiences, as well as a determinant of destination success. Yet, little attention has been paid to the conceptualization and scale development for tourist perceived safety at destinations (TPSD). The primary purpose of this research was to identify the dimensions of TPSD and develop a scale for measuring it based on safety system theory. A three-stage study in a mixed-method design was conducted to develop and validate TPSD. Stage 1 identified the dimensions and initial items of TPSD through extensive literature reviewing and content analysis of travel blogs. In stage 2 (n = 300), an explanatory factor analysis was conducted to refine and validate the preliminary items. Stage 3 (n = 1,830) provided empirical support for a 20-item, five-dimension (human, facility and equipment, natural environment, social environment, management) TPSD scale through confirmatory factor analysis.

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