Crisis, firm characteristics and stock performance: evidence from Hospitality and Tourism sector

This study investigates the critical firm-level strengths and weaknesses that explain cross-sectional variations in abnormal stock returns of Hospitality and Tourism (HT) firms during different phases of a crisis. We used the event study and multivariate regression framework for analysing the Indian HT firms' data around the COVID-19 crisis. While reporting a significant negative influence of COVID-19, we identified the early crisis, market crash and continuation of the crisis periods. Furthermore, we observe that during the early-crisis period, business diversity, financial stability and board diversity improved HT firms' strength to withstand the risk, while business group affiliation was of little help. During the market crash and continuation of the crisis phase, better capital intensity and financial stability proved helpful. The managers of HT firms can take cues from this study to understand firm-level characteristics that provide resilience to their firms' value in managing different phases of the crisis.