*4.3. How the COVID-19 Crisis Affected Strategic Management of Tourism SMEs*

Through H2, we aimed to determine how organizational strategic management (OM) was affected by the COVID-19 crisis. The results of the CFA—factor loading 0.86, regression weight of 0.839 (Table 5)—confirm the validity of the construct proposed, indicating that organizational strategic management decreased due to the COVID-19 crisis. The following evaluates the factors composing the variable organizational strategic management.

SMEs' formulation and monitoring of the income budget obtained a statistically significant factor loading and regression weight. This item is, thus, considered significant within strategic management. For 2020, the frequency of responses showed that 52% of tourism entrepreneurs did not formulate a budget or did not follow up on proposed goals.

Cost and expenditure budget (item 6), factor loading, and regression weight were high, indicating the importance of cost management and monitoring during the crisis. Similarly, reduction in costs and expenditure was one of the crisis' most significant consequences for firms. The data obtained from the survey indicate that only 27% of business owners performed monthly or more continuous monitoring of organizational costs and expenditures.

Item 7 measures projection of financial goals and monitoring. As this item obtains a statistically low but acceptable factor loading and regression weight, we can consider it an aspect of management moderately affected by the pandemic. Frequency analysis of the responses showed that 59% of business owners formulate and monitor goals for profitability, operating margin, or all goals as a whole. Periodicity in formulation or monitoring financial goals was included in item 8 but discarded from testing of the model because it could not be identified.

Determining and monitoring fixed and variable costs (item 9) produced a statistically significant factor loading and regression weight. This finding supports the importance of management and identification for fixed and variable costs during the crisis to reduce the weight of operational leveraging. According to a previous frequency analysis (Appendix B), 54% of tourism SMEs did not identify or classify costs and this lack of management may have intensified the pandemic's impact on their firms.

Finally, for the variable OM, item 10 (productive capacity) obtained average but valid factor loading and regression weight, demonstrating that the COVID-19 crisis decreased tourism firms' productivity and caused infrastructure reductions in 44% of SMEs dedicated to tourism in Colombia.
