Abstract
COVID-19 challenged mobility, redefining crisis navigation and resilience. A modified Challenge Metamorphosis Model (CMM) is proposed to understand crisis navigating process in tourism business resilience-building. A pragmatic mixed-method design, involving 158 tourism-business respondents, multiple regions, interviews, and observation during June–November 2020, was applied. Impacts, challenges, opportunities, varied business responses and outcomes were mirrored. Immediate reactive closure and booking cancellation responses were distinguished from proactive adaptive business continuity measures with low visitors, postponement, few bookings and negotiable employment flexibility. Health, safety, and culturally embedded coping practices and their reinvention aided crisis navigation. Medium-term crisis navigating strategies were differentiated from long-term resilience-building pathways, drawing on the business voice. In the Tanzanian context, theoretical implications offer transformative crisis navigating and resilience-building pathways for similar tourism businesses. The study has potential empirical and theoretical value, especially through its attempt to connect crisis management, chaos theory, contingency theory, resilience theory, and the CMM extension as the central contribution from the Global South context.
Recommended Citation
Lema, Godwin Adiel A.
(2026)
"Exploring Tourism Business Voices in Navigating Pandemic Crisis and Resilience-Building,"
Tanzanian Economic Review: Vol. 16:
Iss.
1, Article 5.
DOI: 10.65085/2507-7740.1042
Available at:
https://commons.udsm.ac.tz/ter/vol16/iss1/5