The economic impacts of COVID-19 on the city tourism-related services; the case of Tehran

Purpose The COVID-19 pandemic has had an extremely destructive impact on the tourism and hospitality industry. However, there is a gap in the literature on measuring the economic impact of the pandemic on employees of urban tourism industries by class. Accordingly, this paper aims to investigate the perceived economic impact of the COVID-19 by workers of urban tourism-related services in Tehran. Design/methodology/approach Based on stratified sampling, a Web-based survey was carried out among 383 employees of tourism industries. To measuring the perceived impact and evaluate statistically significant differences, one samples t-test, one-way ANOVA and post hoc test were used. Findings The study findings revealed that employees of tourism-related services perceived that COVID-19 outbreak has a huge negative impact on the tourism industries in terms of earnings reduction. However, the perceived impact on job losses and reduction of hours of work was non-monotonic. Originality/value Identifying the negative effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on city tourism by industries and their subclasses can contribute to more effective interventions to support and recover the tourism industries. In other words, it is essential to prioritize support for different class of services, to fair allocation of bailout monies and to improve their resilience against crises and shocks.