Entrepreneurship and crisis management in unique hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian-Russian war crisis in 2022. Case study of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship (Poland)

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is one of the most characteristic components of the modern market economy. Taking entrepreneurial activities is the domain of all market entities, including hotel facilities. The years 2020-2022 is a particularly demanding period for every entrepreneur. The COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine waged by the Russian Federation are crises faced by economic entities. The method used to mitigate the course of crises and minimize their effects is crisis management. The aim of the publication is to discuss the current economic situation, entrepreneurial activities and crisis management mechanisms of selected boutique and historical hotels, collectively referred to as unique hotels. For the purposes of achieving the objectives of the publication, the entities of the Kujawsko-Pomorskie Voivodeship (Poland) were examined, because they are distinguished by the high potential of historic buildings constituting the backbone for the development of unique hospitality. In the theoretical part, the authors discussed the concept of unique hotel industry and characterised its situation in Poland and in the Kujawsko -Pomorskie Voivodeship. In addition, the following issues were presented: entrepreneurship and crisis management. The empirical part presents and discusses the results of the conducted research. The authors conducted the research in the form of a personal interview with a deliberately selected group of owners and managers of unique hotels in the Kujawsko-Pomorskie region. The difficulty of the research resulted from the hermetic nature of the surveyed segment of the hotel industry. In the article, the authors put forward the following research hypothesis: the epidemic and war crisis had a significant impact on the entrepreneurship and functioning of the discussed group of hotels. The publication was prepared with the use of compact materials, scientific publications, statistical and netographic data, as well as data obtained through personal interview.