Development of the hospitality industry during the pandemic of COVID-19

Purpose. The article analyzes the practical aspects of the functioning of the restaurant business in the COVID-19 pandemic conditions. Results. Nowadays, Ukraine and the entire world live through a difficult period. It is caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The situation with the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the life of each person almost completely. The tourism industry suffers a particularly crushing blow. The hotel and restaurant business have been intensively developing lately (2015–2019) in Ukraine, employing about half of the population. The emergency has almost stopped the development of this area and inflicted enormous economic losses for both consumers of tourist services and those employed in the industry. The hotel and restaurant business entities face the problem of creating an efficient mechanism to secure quick reaction to emerging impacts in conditions of the pandemic, introduction of quarantine measures, and adverse external environment. The article is focused on the research of the restaurant business companies’ functioning conditions. It assesses the impact of quarantine measures caused by the pandemic on the companies’ development. The author outlines a range of bottlenecks in the development of restaurant facilities that had emerged before the active phase of COVID-19 started. Scientific novelty. One of the first attempts was made to analyze the best foreign experience of running the hotel-and-restaurant business in the special conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the dynamics of the development of the restaurant business in Ukraine for 2010–2021 were determined. The article was further improved the ways of strengthening the business conditions in the restaurant industry at the moment, when immediate adaptation is identified. Practical value. Based on the assessment of the impact of introduced quarantine measures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic on the development of economic entities in the industry, the recommendations over the minimization of their impact through the identification of the main destabilizing factors are offered.