**1. Introduction**

In an emerging economy with deficiencies in its companies' competitiveness and a low percentage of exports, the global COVID-19 crisis may affect economic development more strongly than in more advanced countries [1]. Figures from the World Bank and the International Labor Organization agree that tourism is the sector most affected globally, with a decrease in global GDP of approximately USD 2.4 billion and job losses of up to 80% [2,3]. Due to this impact, tourism has come to be considered a precursor of economic development in many countries.

Colombia's situation in early 2020 differed from that of other Latin American countries and intensified in April and May 2020. Reductions in gross revenue reached 63.4% in Latin American firms. The United Nations [4,5] reports that tourism production in Colombia fell USD 6.79–1.62 and the sector's participation in the nation's GDP decreased from 5% in 2019 to 2% in 2020.

To tackle the pandemic's negative effects on the tourism-based economy, we analyze the causal relationships identified by several authors [6–8], including business situation or positioning prior to the COVID-19 crisis and its influence on business management [9,10]. We also include organizational strategic management—specifically, orientation to establishing financial goals and strategies, relationship to customers, and monitoring of organizational objectives and their contribution to enduring the crisis [11–13]. Further, our review of business studies indicates, as relevant factors, processes of technology-based innovation and development to manage the economic and financial effects of COVID-19 [14–16]. However, none of the studies published to date contrast either all the variables proposed as a whole or the research on factor correlation.

The goal of this study is to determine the economic and organizational impact of the COVID-19 crisis on Colombia's tourism in the subsectors of lodging, travel agencies,

**Citation:** Tobón Perilla, L.N.; Urquía Grande, E.; Cano Montero, E.I. Economic and Organizational Impact of COVID-19 on Colombia's Tourism Sector. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 13350. https://doi.org/10.3390/su142013350

Academic Editors: José-María Montero, Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes and María del Carmen Valls Martínez

Received: 4 August 2022 Accepted: 11 October 2022 Published: 17 October 2022

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food and beverage, and tourism clubs to explain how significant business situations and organizational strategies are in facing crises. Our methodological design includes variables to measure the economic impact of the COVID-19 crisis, such as revenue variations, investment in reactivation, payroll recovery, remote work, amount of public aid, and ongoing impact up to December 2021.

We administered a structured survey to a stratified sample of 289 small- and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) dedicated to tourism in Colombia, based on firms obtained from the Orbis database. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the responses and test the causal effects among the variables for business situations when facing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and the organizational strategic management and investment in technological innovation development. The variables were analyzed based on 25 factors linked to five hypotheses. Since this approach sought to confirm the strength of the relationships among the variables analyzed, we applied confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

The statistical results confirm four of the five hypotheses proposed. The findings indicate a high impact on sales and number of workers in 2020. These two measures were linked most closely to the crisis and the business situation at the end of 2021, when recovery was still underway. The results also showed that financial management of firms that performed strategic management was less severely impacted than financial management of firms that did not. Further, although investments in innovation and technology decreased initially, these factors were subsequently strategic for supporting firms' reactivation and have become the most significant source of recovery, even beyond public aid.

This article is organized as follows. Next, we perform a theoretical review of the most important research antecedents. We then describe the methodological design, from data collection to analytical procedure and presentation of the results. Subsequently, we discuss the results and contrast them with similar studies. Finally, we present the conclusions.

### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Economic Impact of COVID-19 on SMEs and Tourism*

The effects of COVID-19 on the tourism industry are evident in the decrease in approximately USD 2.4 billion in the sector's global GDP [2]. In Latin America, tourism represented 10% of exports in goods and services [4]. In Colombia, tourism's contribution to GDP decreased from 5% in 2019 to 2% in 2020. Expected revenue from the global tourism sector decreased from USD 712 to 396 billion and from USD 6.79 to 1.62 billion in Colombia. The number of international tourists fell globally by 73% in 2020, while the number arriving in Colombia fell 70% [5]. Job losses, thus, reached 80% [3].

The pandemic's main consequence for tourism is decreased demand for services, due to perception of risk and reduction in purchasing capacity [17–20]. In Colombia, this situation led to a 63% decrease in hotel revenue in November 2020 [21], which affected employment and productivity [22], as tourism is a significant source of economic development in many countries [23,24]. Tourism is also considered the sector most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic [25–29].

The pandemic's devastating effects on global tourism [30] have led to studies with varied approaches that focus on employment [31–33], human resources [34], fall in prices [35,36], and decrease in consumption and reserves [20,37–40]. Other topics researched include decline in revenue [41,42], decrease in profits per share [43] or profitability [44], and disadvantage to SMEs and less solvent firms [45,46].

Still, other studies explore public support to mitigate the crisis [47–51], finance and marketing strategy [52] support based on strategic groups [53,54], corporate social responsibility [55–58] technological innovation [59], leadership styles [60,61], and learning and knowledge transfer [62,63]. All these studies have contributed to understanding of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

#### *2.2. Business Situation*

Although the business situation caused by the pandemic has been studied from the perspective of revenue and number of workers [10,64], factors related to the pandemic's influence on the economic activities of accommodation, travel agencies, and food and beverage outlets are also relevant to calculating economic effects. Studying the impact on each activity enables us to understand whether business size, type of client, or other factors influence the way companies face different crises and the level of this impact on their economy [65,66].

Previous studies on business situation and the COVID-19 crisis have shown that the variables hotel size and infrastructure [67], customers and competition [68], SME revenue according to size [10], and declining payrolls are relevant factors in mitigating the economic impact of the pandemic [41]. Like ours, these studies were based on surveys and apply structural equations.

#### *2.3. Strategic Management*

Some studies of strategic organizational management [69,70] incorporate variables, such as planning and management for crisis recovery. The authors of [71] evaluated variables, such as development of policies and reformulation of strategies to reorganize tourism firms facing the effects of the crisis. The authors of [72] analyzed the relationship between the strengths and weaknesses of organizational performance during the period of the pandemic's greatest impact and found increased weakness in management.

Refs. [12,73], in contrast, studied the role of variables on strategies for managing financial performance (measured by profitability), liquidity, and debt–capital ratio in economic recovery of tourism companies and demonstrated the importance of this management. Ref. [74] studied liquidity risk management and financial flexibility as fundamental factors in times of crisis. Other financial strategies studied were deferral of capital payments, reduction in market expenditure to recover liquid assets [75,76], financial restructuring, and new sources of financing.
