A review of communication trends due to the pandemic: perspective from airlines

Abstract

During the first phase of the pandemic, airlines experienced much pressure from customers. This paper investigates crisis communication trends and identifies opportunities for post-pandemic communication. The research applied a thematic analysis of official airline webpages and compared findings against industry reports and recent academic publications. As a result, main communication themes and strategies were summarized in the study. Key emerged themes are hygiene practices, social distance, rate flexibility, and social responsibility. More dialogue in terms of airlines' sustainable impact, responsible travel, and safety practices may be expected. Opportunities for more direct communication with airlines, including direct bookings and further digitalization of communication, were identified.

A bibliometric review of research on COVID-19 and tourism: Reflections for moving forward

“…Research is also required on how destinations and tourism firms should best mitigate and address the tourists' perceived risks, as studies exploring the risk development process and risk mitigation process are scarce. For example, current findings ( Chevtaeva & Guillet, 2021 ; Neuburger & Egger, 2020 ; Wen, Kozak, Yang, & Liu, 2020 ) reveal that crisis communication, tourists' experience with the firms during the lockdown, and personal characteristics determining one's ability to deal with the crisis are likely to impact the tourists' decisions to choose a travel firm and a destination; however, further research is required to examine the persistence of these factors on tourists' behavior as well as the ways in which the industry needs to update current offerings to address any changes in tourism demand. Research on COVID-19 and tourism strongly advocated that there is an urgent need to re-examine and understand the tourists' decision-making and behaviors under the ‘new’ normal ( Bae & Chang, 2021 ; Peluso & Pichierri, 2020 ; Wen, Kozak, et al, 2020 ).…”

Beyond simple messaging: a review of crisis communication research in hospitality and tourism

“…Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the hospitality and tourism industry, generating more studies on crisis communication. Similar to the major themes of this research stream, COVID-19-related work has closely assessed the content of crisis communication messages sent by stakeholders, including hospitality businesses (Carvache-Franco et al , 2021; Chevtaeva and Guillet, 2021), government departments (Salem, Elkhwesky and Ramkissoon, 2021), employees (Park et al , 2020) and the general public (Kwok et al , 2021). In addition to basic content analysis, emotion and sentiment analyses are becoming more common; the main topics and associated emotions (even emotional attachment) have been well studied in tourism and hospitality settings (Hang et al , 2020; E.…”

A study on airlines’ responses and customer satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…Airlines have also made some countermeasures for passengers, such as requesting social distance between passengers and reducing physical contact between people. Some major airlines have introduced more flexible refund and change policies, enhancing their competitiveness in the aviation market ( Chevtaeva and Guillet, 2021 ). Hygiene measures, mask use, and distancing have been proved effective in preventing coronavirus, while temperature screening was unreliable.…”