To survive or to thrive? China's luxury hotel restaurants entering O2O food delivery platforms amid the COVID-19 crisis.

COVID-19 presents luxury hotels with an unenviable task of maneuvering to secure survival. One of the contingency measures of China's five-star hotels is to salvage revenues by entering online-to-offline (O2O) food delivery platforms. However, both opportunities and risks will ensue. Study 1 has content analyzed customer reviews on the largest O2O food delivery platform in China to probe the key factors of concern. The results show that taste, freshness, and brand credibility remain salient, as in dine-in experiences, while packaging and delivery quality emerge as a result of the integration of the O2O platform, and hygiene due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, interaction quality between restaurant staff and customers still plays significant roles with the online channel. Study 2 has further deepened the understanding of luxury restaurants' O2O services through semi-structured interviews with F&B professionals. The results have paved the way for hotel operators to employ tactics on O2O platforms.

Are we behaviorally immune to COVID-19 through robots?

In the context of the health risks of the COVID-19 pandemic, tourists' choices have shifted to reflect a subconscious psychological mechanism - the behavioral immune system - that facilitates human organisms to better identify plausible threats to ones' health through environment cues. This research draws upon this theoretical lens to assess tourists' pre-trip hotel evaluation in two 2 × 2 between-subject experiments. Experiment 1 (robot vs. human) tested the service provider's effect on hotel selection evaluation through the mediation of sense of control and the moderation of pandemic risk. Experiment 2 examined this chain of relationship through the moderation of hotel type. This research contributes to the literature by underscoring the pathogen-avoidance mechanism in tourist evaluation and the peril of robotization.

A quarantined lodging stay: The buffering effect of service quality.

How do guests feel during their stay at quarantine lodging? This study draws on terror management theory and social exclusion theory to synthesize a model that highlights guests' perceptions about their experience under enforced isolation. The model articulates guests' feeling of anxiety and loneliness, whereas quality of service presents warmth and care that activates an anxiety buffer mechanism that mitigates the effect of anxiety. In turn guests' level of anxiety is further explained by an interaction between their health status and the length of stay. Results point to a conduit for studying the dark side of hospitality, opening up research avenues that could help assess broader social behavioral changes during the global pandemic, while offering operators revelations for lodging management during a crisis.