Insidious Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Leverage of the Tourism and Hospitality Sector in India

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a massive cascading effect on the entire tourism and hospitality sector, acting as a demand shock, affecting not only customary travellers but also wiping out any transient demand. The upside of these difficult circumstances is that they can be used to test the sector’s resilience. In this context, this paper analyses the deleveraging risk that industry players in India face by employing a qualitative response model, ‘Logit’. The study concludes that the deleveraging risk that sector players face depends upon the amount of debt and leverage ratios, both during the pre-and post-pandemic period. However, the influence of otherfinancial indicators on deleveraging has been different in terms of its intensity and bi-directional impact. Moreover, during COVID-19 deleveraging tendencies were noticed only in 204 firms, compared to 242 firms before COVID-19, discrediting the forced deleveraging as predicted in the literature.