The Tourism Industry in A Developing Destination in Time of Crisis : The Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on The Tourism Industry in North Sulawesi, Indonesia

Abstract: The tourism industry is a developing industry that has the risk of facing various challenges in the form of crisis. World Health Organization (WHO) announced the COVID-19 pandemic on March 11th, 2020 that caused disruption in people's mobility across the world in order to reduce the infection rate. Many industries were affected by this, especially the tourism industry as it relies on people traveling to different places to run. The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) already made initial assessment to see the potential economic impact. The result helped the general population to understand the scale of impact of the crisis. However, business owners need to understand how it affects the contingency of their business. This research conducted a study towards business owners in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, as a developing destination, to assess the impact to the businesses through the five components of Service Management System (SMS) model. The result shows how big the impact is, which is in line with the initial assessment from economic perspective by UNWTO, where three out of five components of SMS are impacted with minimum space for workaround.