The hospitality market in Ukraine: War challenges and restoration possibilities

  • Received November 30, 2022;
    Accepted February 24, 2023;
    Published March 3, 2023
  • Author(s)
  • DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.21511/im.19(1).2023.12
  • Article Info
    Volume 19 2023, Issue #1, pp. 140-150
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

The Crimea annexation and the military aggression of the Russian Federation, which first began in some territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in 2014 and escalated into a full-scale war on February 24, 2022, resulted in heavy losses of life and a humanitarian crisis, exacerbating economic, political and social instability. To restore Ukraine’s economy, all businesses, including hospitality (hotel and restaurant business) sector, should continue functioning, though it is a challenging but crucial task. The paper aims to analyze the state of the hospitality market in the current war conditions in Ukraine and assess the possibilities of its restoration and development. An online survey was conducted among 282 representatives of the hospitality business in Kyiv, Sumy, Chernihiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Poltava, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil, and Zakarpattia regions. Based on the results, in 2022, almost 23% of hospitality industry representatives suspended their activities, and 54% functioned only partially. Many surveyed hotels and restaurants (36%) have gradually changed and adapted their business strategies. For more than half of the hospitality representatives, expenses increased by 20-50%, and profits dropped by more than 20%. The critical consequences of the full-scale war for the Ukrainian hospitality market are as follows: disruption of supply chains, reduction in consumers’ purchasing power, changes in consumer demand, shortage of certain types of products, shortage of personnel, and business unprofitability.

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    • Figure 1. Mode of operation of the hospitality industry
    • Figure 2. Changes in the business strategy considering new realities
    • Figure 3. Changes in expenses of the hospitality industry during the Russian-Ukrainian war
    • Figure 4. Changes in profits during the Russian-Ukrainian war
    • Figure 5. Expectations of the hospitality industry regarding the timing of business recovery
    • Figure 6. The primary needs of the hospitality market participants
    • Table 1. Respondents’ profiles by region and industry type
    • Conceptualization
      Fedir Zhuravka, Hanna Filatova
    • Investigation
      Fedir Zhuravka, Olena Yudina
    • Project administration
      Fedir Zhuravka
    • Supervision
      Fedir Zhuravka
    • Writing – review & editing
      Fedir Zhuravka
    • Data curation
      Natalia Nebaba, Olena Yudina
    • Formal Analysis
      Natalia Nebaba, Svitlana Haponenko, Hanna Filatova
    • Methodology
      Natalia Nebaba, Svitlana Haponenko, Hanna Filatova
    • Resources
      Natalia Nebaba, Olena Yudina, Svitlana Haponenko, Hanna Filatova
    • Software
      Natalia Nebaba, Svitlana Haponenko
    • Validation
      Olena Yudina, Svitlana Haponenko
    • Visualization
      Olena Yudina
    • Writing – original draft
      Hanna Filatova