Vulnerability of Rural Tourism Businesses in Covid-19 Crisis (Case Study: Kalat-e Naderi County, Razavi Khorasan Province)

With the spread of Covid-19, the demand for tourism decreased to a minimum. As a result, tourism businesses suffered from much damage, including a reduction in tourist stay, a decrease in the sale of rural products, an increase in unemployment of tourism sector workers, a decrease in income and an increase in economic pressure that faced a lack of capital efficiency in the tourism sector. This issue is of particular importance in tourism destination villages due to the dependence of a large part of the residents' income on tourism; Therefore, the current study has examined the vulnerability of rural tourism businesses in the face of Covid-19.

The descriptive-analytical research method is of applied type. Field data collection was done in the spring of 2021 before the start of the seventh wave of Covid-19. The study area is Kalat-e Naderi county in Razavi Khorasan province. In this study, eight villages were identified and studied as tourist destinations with the help of cultural heritage experts and district administrations. The unit of analysis was 201 tourism business owners who had direct and indirect income from tourism before Covid-19. The situation of tourism businesses in two periods before and after the Covid-19 outbreak was investigated with the help of the Pseudo-panel method with six variables on a relative scale. Also, the damage caused to the tourism sector was quantified with the help of 18 indicators on an ordinal scale. Data analysis was done with the help of paired sample and single sample t-test, two independent samples, exploratory factor analysis, and one-way analysis of variance. The reliability of the questionnaires was checked with the help of Cronbach's alpha, and its coefficient was 0.81 for 18 indicators.

The average vulnerability of tourism businesses on the Likert scale has been evaluated as high, with 4.03. The vulnerability of mature businesses is 4.1 more than that of start-up businesses, with 3.9 and growing businesses at 3.8. The high age and low level of education of mature business owners can help explain the high vulnerability of mature businesses. Exploratory factor analysis divided the most significant damages of tourism businesses under five factors with 63% variance. A significant decrease in tourism demand with a 29.91% variance is the main damage to tourism businesses. Then they are: jeopardizing job security and investments, stopping the activities of the tourism sector, lack government support for tourism businesses and closure tourism businesses, respectively.

The outbreak of Covid-19 showed that tourism businesses are extremely vulnerable in the face of external crises, and the owners of these businesses suffered an economic shock. In such a situation, these businesses were left alone, with no plan for survival or reducing their vulnerability. About 40 percent of the surveyed businesses, which had income from the tourism sector before Covid-19, lost their income from the tourism sector altogether after the outbreak, and the organizations in charge of rural tourism could not play an effective role in the survival and increasing the resilience of tourism businesses. Therefore, it is necessary to play the active role of trustee institutions in adopting effective measures to increase the resilience of tourism businesses, especially in the villages of tourism destinations, in the face of external impulses.