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This paper aims to discuss the effects of COVID-19 on hotel marketing and management practices and outlines a three-pronged research agenda to stimulate knowledge development in the hotel sector.

This paper is based on an overview of the relevant literature on hotel marketing and management and the hotel guest behavior. The authors also investigated hospitality service trends to propose a research agenda.

This paper presents a research agenda from three dimensions – artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, hygiene and cleanliness and health and health care. First, different types of AI (mechanical, thinking and feeling) might open up distinct research streams at the intersection of health crises and hotel management, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this paper recommends that researchers move beyond typical perspectives on the antecedents and outcomes of hotel hygiene and cleanliness to delve into guests’ perceptions of the cleanliness of specific hotel surfaces. Furthermore, a more in-depth analysis is warranted about the evolving relationship between hotels and the health-care sector.

The recommended research areas are intended to advance the knowledge base to help hotels recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. The suggested research streams are expected to provide actionable insights to promote the development and sustainability of the hotel sector.

This paper appears to be a frontier study, critically examining possible effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on hotel marketing and management practices and how hoteliers may respond to such challenges to recover after this pandemic.

This paper aims to examine new housekeeping procedures introduced in response to COVID-19. The pandemic has required hotels to reassess their standard operating procedures, especially in housekeeping to retain the confidence of guests in the hotel/brand via high standards of sanitization, hygiene and the maintenance of social distancing.

The article draws on publications and announcements made by major brands and associations about their updated standards of cleaning, hygiene and sanitisation, social distancing and workplace protocols arising from the pandemic. Further, a survey was used to determine the impact of new processes on housekeeping teams and their perceptions of its effect on service quality, guests and employee safety.

Some key new processes are: keeping the hotel room vacant for several hours after departure, the sanitisation of every room, cleaning and sanitisation of high touch points, linen and waste management and low frequency or complete avoidance of the cleaning of occupied rooms. The survey questionnaire establishes that housekeepers value their new standard operating procedures (SOPs) and agree that “clinically clean” is the new normal and essential to avoid cross-contamination and keep guests and employees safe.

As the pandemic is a current phenomenon, the guidelines and protocols are rapidly evolving. Hotels are innovating and looking for new processes to manage infection control. This study has mainly focused on cleanliness and hygiene protocols and procedures prevalent in the industry. Currently, future work could be useful to evaluate the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the new processes and procedures that have been deployed.

In order to recover from the pandemic, the Indian hotel industry faces a colossal task. Even when the virus peaks have passed and hotels can safely reopen, the fear of infection will continue and so guest trust and confidence is essential. Given this, the paper should be of interest to hoteliers and policymakers seeking to implement the best possible post COVID-19 housekeeping practices.

This paper identifies and analyses best practice in hotel housekeeping in response to COVID-19. The new standards that are being adopted aim to assure hotel guests and employees about the hygiene and safety measures and standards that have been adopted.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to enhance the tangible quality construct by considering cleanliness as a customer service quality dimension; and to assess customers' opinions on cleanliness by gender and education.

The population under study is the general adult population of a Southwestern US city. The subjects voluntarily participate through a link to an anonymous online survey provided on a university's daily electronic news medium. Reliability and factor analyses are used to determine if the 32 criteria will in fact become an effective analysis measurement scale for cleanliness and multivariate analysis is used for the segmentation.

The results indicate that customers have made decisions to select, stay or return to an establishment based upon cleanliness. The results are meaningful because they suggest a scale that is reliable and valid and can be used to measure customer perceptions of cleanliness in a service organization. The results also confirm that education and gender are significant factors in assessing perceptions of cleanliness.

The sampling method is a limitation to this study, as the sample represents a limited cross‐section of the US population.

The results of this paper provide service establishments that consider loyalty and repeat business key to their financial success, indicators that cleanliness is a critical component of the overall physical environment and influence customers' assessment of the service experience.

This paper examines the dimension of cleanliness in detail through the creation of a measurement scale and considers customers' perceptions and willingness to return.

The notion of consumer sovereignty is not a new concept. However to effectively use it as a tool to improve food hygiene standards, proprietors of eating‐places must know what customers look for to assess those standards. It is also important that customers demonstrate their unwillingness to buy from unhygienic premises. This article summarises research, using the “Delphi Technique”, backed up by semi‐structured interviews which has established a body of new knowledge about the subject. Conclusions are drawn about the relevance of food hygiene standards to running an effective business and the need for a public education campaign. The results also challenge current views about the importance of food hygiene standards to customers.

Based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response Model, this study aims to investigate how the intention of Chinese guests to revisit a hotel (response) is triggered by the quality of the hotel’s hygiene protocols (stimulus) during the pandemic. Brand image, perceived guest satisfaction and perceived customer trust were examined as the organism factors in this model.

The quantitative method was adopted to collect data via a structured online survey of 385 Chinese hotel guests. Their responses were analyzed using SPSS (v.26) and SmartPLS (3.3.2) software.

The quality of hotel hygiene protocols was found to have a significant impact on hotel brand image, perceived guest satisfaction and perceived guest trust. Hotel brand image, perceived guest satisfaction and perceived guest trust, in turn, demonstrated significant relationships with guests’ revisit intention.

Theoretically, the present study offers a framework to understand the impact of hotel hygiene protocols on guest revisit intention. Practically, the findings of the study encourage industry practitioners to implement proper safety protocols and standard operating procedures related to COVID-19.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, hotel hygiene standards have become a key concern for guests. The current study provides important and meaningful insights into whether and how hotel hygiene quality promotes guest revisit intention.

The purpose of this research is to show the evaluation of food hygiene knowledge and self‐reported behaviours of school children, assessment of children's attitudes towards food hygiene and evaluation of barriers to the adoption of appropriate food hygiene behaviours.

The food hygiene knowledge and self‐reported behaviours of pupils (4 and 14 years; Key Stages 1‐3 in the English system – or Scottish equivalent) were determined using age‐appropriate knowledge quizzes completed by 2,259 pupils across England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. Attitudes towards food hygiene and barriers to performing desirable hygiene‐related behaviours were established through semi‐structured interviews with 82 pupils who completed knowledge tasks in South East England.

Children generally had good knowledge of food hygiene. However, there were misconceptions about the nature of micro‐organisms and how they affect food. In addition, a lack of reminders and practical food activities, especially at Key Stage 2 (7‐11 years), coupled with poor hand‐washing facilities, meant that children did not always adopt desirable behaviours. Children gave suggestions for ways to help others to remember good practice.

The study identified areas of weakness in pupils' hygiene knowledge and understanding and has determined barriers to adoption of desirable behaviours at all times. It has also suggested ways in which food hygiene education could be made more engaging for pupils, and other methods to encourage good practice.

This paper aims to examine the policy and guidance that was issued, either as a direct result of the NHS Plan, or part of a subsequent initiative, surrounding cleaning in the NHS.

A literature review of the Department of Health and related agency web sites was completed. In addition there was a literature review of the relevant academic journals.

There is a growing evidence base on environmental cleaning in the NHS and more specifically the relationship between environmental cleaning and infection control. This paper has examined the contradiction in the evidence in the suspected correlation between infection control and environmental cleaning. However, one thing that does appear to be consistent is that a performance measure based on an observation (visual) assessment is not a sufficient tool to evaluate the environmental cleanliness of a hospital ward.

While the clinical community recognise the contribution of environmental cleaning and the impact on healthcare, more needs to be done to have the relevant studies published in the FM domain. Conversely there also needs to be work done to allow the FM community to have a “voice” in the infection control journals. The literature reviewed suggests that a usable technological solution is required to confirm satisfactory cleaning standards in healthcare facilities.

There is relatively little published work on the importance of cleaning to operations in the NHS, particularly in the FM domain.

In the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic, organizations now are expected to serve customers who are highly conscious of safety and sanitation. Among others, the hospitality industry is significantly and negatively influenced by this pandemic. Given the unique characteristics of services, using advanced technology is not enough to create a memorable experience without physical interaction between service providers and customers. Thus, this study aims to define the “new normal” for service customers and to explore the “new service design” for the hotel industry.

As most of the Southeast Asian countries heavily rely on the tourism industry, this study focuses on one of the emerging tourism destinations in this region, Malaysia. The data is collected through in-depth interviews with 17 potential national and international tourists.

The results suggest that considering the “new normal” for customers, there is an immediate need for the hotel industry to revamp their service design by mainly practicing disinfection and sanitation activities, re-designing overall infrastructure and introducing promotional offers.

This study is novel in its kind as it provides useful guidelines for both practitioners and academicians/researchers. Under this crucial time, very few research is conducted specifically focusing on the hotel industry and tourists’ behaviors amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The study will provide in-depth knowledge about tourists’ expectations from the hotel services, especially in their own voices.

This study aims to empirically assess restaurant surfaces’ cleanliness and compare them to customers’ perceptions about the cleanliness of surfaces when dining in a restaurant.

This study used two methods to collect data. The first was a survey method to gauge customers’ perceptions and an empirical test to measure cleanliness using an adenosine triphosphate (ATP) meter. Two data sets were collected to compare customers’ perceptions and actual cleanliness measurements. One data set surveyed respondents as to their perceptions of high- and low-touch restaurant surfaces among 19 areas of the dining room and 15 surfaces from the restroom, and their perceived cleanliness or dirtiness of those same surfaces. The second one conducted empirical measurements of the cleanliness of these surfaces using an ATP meter, which were then compared to customers’ perceptions.

Although all surfaces had higher ATP readings than a 30 relative light units’ threshold, there were significant differences in ATP readings among surfaces. Results showed a fair amount of consistency between the consumers’ perceptions of cleanliness and the actual results of ATP readings for the cleanest areas, but very little consistency in customers’ perceptions and experimental measurements for the dirtiest areas.

This study empirically demonstrated the need for improved cleaning techniques and the importance of proper training for foodservice employees. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, results of this study suggest an additional responsibility on managers and staff to ensure clean environments and the imperative to address the concerns of their customers.

Based on an extensive literature review, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior studies have compared consumers’ cleanliness perceptions with empirical measurements of cleanliness in restaurant settings using an ATP meter. The results of this study provide restaurant managers a better understanding of customers’ perceptions of cleanliness. It also provides restaurant managers and staff information to develop more effective cleaning procedures. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, perceptions of cleanliness and measures of actual cleanliness are more important than they have been in the past.

With the increasing realization of the importance of communication for sustainable development, strategic issues such as institutional alliances, public participation and media integration have emerged as indispensable tools in any environmental campaign. This study is an inquiry into India's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (2014–2019) which is one of the major strategic sustainable development campaigns of the 21st century. The twin research questions raised are (1) What were the major action-plans and the key outreach strategies adopted in SBA? and (2) How the discourse of swachhata (cleanliness) was propagated in SBA?

With response to research question 1, a seven-fold analysis of the strategic aspects of the SBA is undertaken utilizing Willner's (2006) strategic approach to the promotion of sustainable development campaigns. Research question 2 is addressed through a multimodal analysis of the discourse of swachhata (cleanliness) following the Grammar of Visual Design framework of Kress and van Lieuwen (2006).

The campaign employed a 360-degree promotional strategy. It involved print, electronic and social media; promoted inter- and intra-institutional alliances; roped in opinion leaders and opinion formers; and encouraged massive public participation. Strategically, SBA's discourse of cleanliness adhered to the “3R” principles of the United Nation's Sustainability Goals: Reduce, Reuse and Recycle. Tactically, the discourse of cleanliness was framed in the ideas of shame versus dignity and was entrenched in the ideals of commitment to nation and neighborhood, and good citizenship.

One major limitation of this study is the exclusion of certain intervening variables such as (1) access to the state of the art of green technology, (2) green financing, (3) green incubation, (4) sustainable PPP models for SBA and (5) for-profit approach to environmental cleanliness. Future studies can expand the scope of research by incorporating these variables in their analytical frameworks.

This is the first study to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the communication aspect of SBA. This case study, in particular, can be useful for the young research scholars and postgraduate students of Communication, Management and Public Policy.