Enterprise Academy Fellow,

Mariia is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the School of Hospitality Management & Tourism. She obtained her Specialist’s degree in Tourism and Hospitality Management from Udmurt State University (Izhevsk, Russia) in 2010 and PhD degree from the School of Hotel and Tourism Management and the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong) in 2020. Her PhD thesis was devoted to digital business models in tourism and the effects of national cultures on their development. In addition to teaching and research experience, Mariia has diverse practical experience in the travel industry. Her jobs included various sectors of tourism: from a travel agency to international tour operating service, MICE, corporate travel management, and applied research in tourism.

 

Industry-Academia Research Collaborations – Recovering Tourism

Maria's fellowship aimed to explore the challenges facing Irish travel companies in terms of post-COVID recovery, and to identify and summarize the needs and requests of Irish travel companies for recovery solutions. Tourism, a key economic sector of Ireland, was enormously affected by the pandemic. However, the industry entered into the recovery phase with the commencement of the new 2022 tourism season. This research evaluated the state of the Irish travel industry based on interviews with industry practitioners from different sectors of tourism across the Republic of Ireland. The fellowship sought to reveal mutual interests between the School of Hospitality Management and Tourism and enterprise, with a view towards long-term collaborations. This was designed to discover new placements for students within the industry and to reveal interest from travel enterprises for future collaborations.

 

The primary output was in the form of a report on the route to recovery, post-Covid, for the Irish Tourism Industry. Findings show that Irish travel enterprises faced a range of financial, operational, reputational, policy and communications obstacles caused by the COVID crisis. The main challenges included the loss of income, new tourists’ profiles, the rigid and distant approach of authorities, lack of confidence in the future, staff shortages and a problem finding real-time updates. The financial challenge was addressed, to a large extent, by government grants. Many tourism companies have been fully dependent on government grants, and practitioners evaluated the grants regime very positively.

 

This report offers recommendations for Irish tourism post-COVID recovery and also on making the travel industry resilient, sustainable, and adaptable to overcome future challenges. Key advice included the development of triple-helix collaborations (platforms, forums and oversight committees for engagement between industry, academia and government); the provision of more market insights, research, real-time data and statistics for public access; to focus on sustainable development and solutions for overtourism; to promote careers in tourism and to rethink tourism education to align it to the modern requirements.