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At present, the whole hospitality and tourism sector is severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and related lockdowns have been producing severe transformations in the industry. Several business reports and academic studies have highlighted that, compared to before the COVID-19 outbreak, tourists will likely choose to visit less crowded tourism destinations, and will tend to prefer accommodation facilities that can deliver their services with reduced face-to-face interactions and guaranteeing fair levels of physical and social distancing. This said, there is only a limited number of scientific studies dealing with this topic so far. This, coupled with the extremely dynamic and turbulent environment we are currently experiencing, urges scholars to further intensify the academic discussion on this area of research. Further examination would give practitioners knowledge to assist them in their decision-making in an era of tourism where everyone seems to be moving towards a ‘new normal’ of unknown duration. The present study was thus conducted to make a contribution to this debate by providing and discussing the results of a factor analysis on a sample of 200 German respondents, to dig into the criteria that travellers use to select the destination and the accommodation for their vacation. Findings contribute to deepen the scientific debate about how tourist behaviour is transformed by the COVID-19 pandemic and, potentially, by any other type of virus that could replicate a similar emphasis on hygiene and safety, as well as on social distancing. Meanwhile, our results will provide policy makers, destination marketers, and accommodation managers with useful information on effectively planning and implementing their service design in order to meet tourists' expectations and needs.

Set against the background of uncertainty and crisis generated by COVID-19, policymakers, destination marketers and tourism and hospitality managers are struggling in trying to envision how, and till when, tourist behaviour will be changed and transformed by this pandemic and how tourists will select the accommodation where to stay during their holiday.

So far, a limited number of academic studies have been devoted to analyzing how travellers will select the accommodation for their holidays. This urges academicians to fill this gap with the aim to provide practitioners with fresh and insightful knowledge to support their decision-making in a tourism era where everyone seems to be shifting towards a ‘new normality’ of uncertain duration.

This study was therefore carried out to contribute to this debate by presenting and discussing findings of an empirical investigation applying a factor–cluster analysis on a sample of 225 French consumers/travellers to profile them based on accommodation selection criteria. Further, a series of chi-square tests was run to investigate whether significant differences exist among clusters based on their sociodemographic characteristics (i.e. gender, age, level of occupation, employment status) and travel-related variables (i.e. the preferred type of accommodation and the length of the holiday).

Findings contribute to deepening the scientific debate about how tourists' behaviour is being transformed in a tourism era affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, our results will provide accommodation marketers with useful information to be used to effectively plan and implement their service design to meet tourists' expectations and needs.