Answer :

1. Introduction 

The pandemic of Coronavirus has extended to all the nations around the globe. Its layout has left national businesses and economies evaluating the costs, as the administration still struggles with the measures of new lockdown to handle the virus spread. In spite of the advancement of the new vaccines, several are continuing to wonder the way recovery would appear to be. Covid- 19 business involves differences in alterations in functioning conditions, sources of add on support or funding, and revenue. 

This study mainly focuses on highlighting the impact of Covid- 19 on the hospitality industry of Melbourne, especially on Crown Towers Melbourne Hotel. Furthermore, it also states the failed measures of the government which led to the increase of the cases and extended the period of lockdown in the nation. Lastly, certain recommendations have been made in order to overcome the negative impacts that the hotel has suffered. 

2. Implication of Covid19 on Crown Towers Melbourne 

2.1 Implications for the organization’s use of Knowledge Management

“Knowledge Management” is the responsive procedure of sharing, retaining, structuring, and defining the experience and knowledge of employees within a company. Frequently, it is addressing learning and training in a company or of its consumers. 

As the Covid 19 had a major effect all over the globe, Melbourne was no less affected by it. The hotel industry of Melbourne underwent great losses due to the sudden and rapid increase of the cases and had to immediately shut for the lockdown. For instance, the case of Crown Towers, Melbourne can be taken. Crown Towers is known to be among the famous and luxurious hotels in Melbourne. The revenue rate had a sudden fall during the commencement of the pandemic. The figures declared that the revenue rate of the Crown Tower Melbourne was down to 27% to $1.2 billion. Also, the net profits of the hotel represented to decrease by 80% in the year 2020 to $79.5 million (Bavas, 2020). These figures represent that the pandemic of Covid 19 had a great impact on the business operations of the hotel.  

Furthermore, the government of the nation was concerned regarding the arrangements to be made for the tennis players who arrive from outside. Thus, they decided that the hotel of the Crowns would be transformed into a tennis quarantine hub for the sportsmen who arrive in Melbourne. This procedure was applied so that the players and their companions would have to directly shuttle to and from the centres for tennis from their hotel, and avoid any contact with the general public (McClure, 2020). The hotel quarantine measure was taken in order to provide the ability to train as well as was crucial for all the players and their support staff. 

The impact of Covid 19 eventually led the administration of Crown Towers Melbourne to adopt certain measures too, in order to meet their responsibilities towards their business and staff. The additional leave policies were made available to every employee of the hotel for those who either were directed by the symptoms of the virus or had a contact with a detected case. Yet, this proved to be a negative factor for the organization of Crown Towers as the frequent taking of leaves led to a lack in their training procedure. Also, due to the pandemic minimum amount of workers were allotted in each shift which leads to a scarcity in their learning procedure and also resulted in miscommunications during the distribution of works (Crown Melbourne, 2020).  As being in the hotel industry, the business could not be entirely shut down and thus had to be regulated at least in the minimum ways possible. For this, the administration of Crown Towers Melbourne took up certain measures in order to train their employees to manage their job tasks in the pandemic situation. Methods of proper sanitization were taught to the employees when they arrived in their workplace, and maintaining social distancing was also instructed to them to avoid any contact amongst each other. Usage of a proper mask and PPE kits was made mandatory to the employees, especially for the ones who were assigned to the cleaning department. Proper sessions were also conducted for the employees in regular intervals to understand the issues that they are facing in their job role maintaining all factors to avoid the infection of the virus, as well as suitable recommendations, were made to them to overcome their issues. Moreover, certain instructions to maintain the new policies for Covid 19 in the hotel were provided to the guests when they arrived there. On the other hand, there were some employees who violated the rules in maintaining the proper norms to avoid the infection of the virus and thus, were infected by it.   

2.2 Implications for the organization’s use of Information Technology 

The concept of “Information Technology” is mainly referred to the construction of interaction networks for an organization, safeguarding information and data, administering and creating databases, assisting employees to overcome their problems with their mobile devices or computers, or performing a variety of another task to make sure the security and efficiency of business information (Stokdyk, 2019). 

There was a witness of the origin of several infections to the employees associated with the hotel industry in Melbourne due to the breaking of the rules. More than 20,000 tourists experienced a 14-day quarantine in the nation (BBC, 2020). The government of Melbourne initially did not close the arriving and departure of tourists from the nation which was the main cause for the increase of Covid 19 cases in the country. The exchange of tourists mainly involved either positive cases of the virus or some were the carriers of it which led to the rapid spread of the infection among the citizens of the country. Initially, proper treatment measures were also unknown to the government of the country which led to several deaths and complicated health issues within the people. Furthermore, as the cases were uncontrollably increasing the government had to implement a sudden lockdown for an indefinite period. As witnessed in a recent analysis, it was seen that there stood to be an increase in the cases of Melbourne, Australia from the month of March 2020 which went at its peak in the month of August 2020 having 715 confirmed cases, 304 cases increasing on a daily basis and a percentage of 73.97 was the daily rate of change (World Health Organization, 2021).  Though this acted to be the first precautionary measure to avoid the spread of the infection further, yet the cases were already so rapidly spread that there were witnesses of identifying a higher amount of positive Covid- 19 patients every day. Thus, the hotel industry was the prime place to reside with positive cases as their business mainly runs on the stay of tourists. 

Furthermore, due to the pandemic, the managers and the administrative workforce started performing their job on a “work from home” basis (Kaushik and Guleria, 2020). As several employees were still not accustomed to the idea of virtual work communication, there arose an issue of miscommunication and the proper functioning of the Crown Towers was disrupted. Also, as people were suffering from the infection of the virus and were on leaves, the regulation of proper information among the administration, employees and also the customers entered into a gap. Lastly, the major issue which was mainly faced by the organization of Crow Towers was a gap in their security measures. Due to lack of employee shifts, proper security was not maintained in the hotel and the customers were also insecure about this issue. Even, proper maintenance of the confidential data was prone to the risk of the Crown Towers Hotel.        

2.3 Implications for the organization’s use of E-Commerce

By utilizing the strategy of "E-commerce" a company can extend their business to international and national markets with the least financial investment. The process of e-commerce assists an organization to present better services for the customers. It additionally assists to simplify the procedure of business and transforms them to be efficient and faster. Moreover, e-commerce also reduces the activity of doing paperwork (Ruhaniika, 2021). 

Figure 1: Decrease in rate in Tourism during Covid 19

(Source: UNCTAD, 2020)

However, due to the outbreak of Covid 19, the process of e-commerce had a major turn in their businesses. Mostly, there were benefits for the online businesses yet there were certain areas where the operations were highly hampered due to the pandemic. Especially in the nation of Melbourne, the citizens started depending entirely on the business of e-commerce, but the main sufferers stood to be the businesses of the hotel industry. The renowned hotels in Melbourne like Crown Towers hold a website from which they connect to their customers in terms of inquiries, and bookings. However, the pandemic highly affected their booking rates and drop in their revenue incomes. Similarly, there were certain investments made by the company of Crown Towers in order to market their business on the digital platform. As there was a complete shutdown of tourism in Melbourne, Australia, therefore, no marketing and advertisements came out to be beneficial during that particular time. Developments made in their website were too not acknowledged and taken service during the period of a pandemic. Thus, the amount of investment made for digital and social media marketing by the organization of Crown Towers Hotel underwent a series of losses for the period (Zenker, and Kock, 2020). The statistics below show the decrease in tourists in Melbourne due to the banned of tourism by the Australian government. 

3. Recommendations 

This is some of the recommendations that can be made to overcome the issues due to Covid 19 by the organisation of Crow Towers Hotel:

3.1 For improving Knowledge Management 

In order to improve the knowledge management skill in the organization of Crown Towers Hotel, certain measures are needed to be adopted by the company. In order to initiate proper knowledge and learning among the employees during the pandemic, the administration requires structuring their training sessions in a different effective manner (Mukhtar et al. 2020). To avoid any kind of miscommunication among administrations and employees the managers need to conduct regular virtual meetings before a particular shift and elaborate the job tasks in detail to their employees. Furthermore, adequate information to requires to be provided by the organization before the stay of any tourist in their hotel. 

3.2 For improving Information Technology

For the regulation of handling efficient technologies for information, training sessions by the organization of Crown Towers Hotel requires to be provided. Employees who are not accustomed to this new equipment for understanding their job role needs to be made habituated and efficient with tasking with new technologies that have been adopted by the organisation (Garfin, 2020). Additional to that, the security system of the company requires to be taken seriously, especially during the period of lockdown. Compromising the security of the company would lead to an immense downfall in its business. Both the security of the customers and the preservation of confidential data require to be secured by using special technologies like machine learning.  

3.3 For improving E-Commerce

In order to improve the e-commerce business of the organization of Crown Towers Hotel, the organization can start online cooking classes by the specialist chefs of the company. For this, they can ask the customers to pay a subscription amount and learn to make amazing recipes at home taught by the chefs. The hotel can also start delivering their special menus at doorsteps which can be booked by the customers from their online websites. This strategy would keep their website lively and also the developments made to the website would be acknowledged by the customers (Tran, 2021). Furthermore, the imprint of their impressive website would stick in the minds of the customers and after the period of lockdown, they would definitely desire to experience the services provided by the company of Crown Towers Hotel. 

4. Conclusion 

Thus, from the above analysis, it can be understood that the pandemic situation due to Covid 19 impacted immensely the hotel business of Crown Towers. Certain recommendations have also been outlined in order for the company to overcome its complications due to the pandemic.