Building resilience in hotels: Unveiling the nexus of entrepreneurial orientation, firm performance and fear of crisis

This study examines factors affecting the willingness to build resilience within the tourism industry during the last wave of COVID-19. Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) is shown as a catalyst for the willingness to build resilience, with firm performance and fear of crisis playing mediating and moderating roles, respectively. We treat resilience as a multidimensional concept that encompasses elements such as diversification, flexibility, digitalization, and cooperation. We tested the proposed research model on a sample of 117 small independent hotels in Poland. The findings showed that in the cases of cooperation and flexibility, the impact of entrepreneurial orientation is direct, for digitalization the effect is only indirect (mediated by firm performance), while for diversification the effect is both direct and indirect. This implies that in response to a crisis, if small hotels aim to strengthen their resilience (in its various dimensions), a high level of entrepreneurship is required, and for certain dimensions, an appropriate level of performance is needed. Noteworthy is the moderating role of a fear of crisis on the impact of EO on the willingness to strengthen flexibility. • Diversification and digitalization boost hotel resilience. • Entrepreneurial orientation drives resilience and performance in small hotels. • Better performance aids hotel diversification and digitalization. • Entrepreneurship directly boosts flexibility and cooperation. • Crisis fear impacts flexibility efforts in hotels.