Highlights A comprehensive review of the impact of COVID-19 on China’s hotel industry. A COVID-19 management framework which addresses the anti-pandemic phases, principles, and strategies. And four Post-COVID-19 strategies including multi-business and multi-channels, product design and investment preference, digital and intelligent transformation, and market reshuffle.

Purpose Draws from the equity theory and customer equity literature, this study aims to argue that the implementation of contactless service as an innovative service design in the hospitality industry can generate customers’ emotional attachment and cognitive evaluation of the brand. Design/methodology/approach This study uses partial least squares modeling and data from a large-scale survey of hotel guests who have experienced contactless service in mainland China. The authors performed an importance-performance map analysis to evaluate the significance of critical variables and constructs by including the performance dimension. Findings Customer equity is a three-dimensional higher-order construct that embraces value-, brand- and relationship equity. A pleasant experience of contactless service in hospitality encounters generates a positive effect on customer equity and delight. Additionally, increased customer equity improves satisfaction and trust. Practical implications This study provides practical evidence for hospitality practitioners to consider contactless service in creating memorable experiences, improve customer satisfaction, build trust and add value to hospitality brands. Originality/value The findings of this study add to the understanding of emerging contactless services, contribute to the development of the equity theory and current customer equity literature and advance the implementation of innovative service design in hospitality.

Purpose This paper aims to deliver a systematic review of customer engagement in hospitality and tourism by synthesising existing literature, thus presenting a state-of-art landscape of customer engagement research. Design/methodology/approach A total of 173 peer-reviewed articles were collected from seven databases, spanning from 2007 to 2020. A systematic review was conducted by analysing, categorizing and synthesising existing studies to examine the evolution, conceptual nature, typology and measurement of the existing literature on customer engagement in hospitality and tourism. Findings This study provides an overview of the temporal, spatial, sectoral and journal-wise distribution of customer engagement in hospitality and tourism. A comprehensive definition of customer engagement is proposed based on five fundamental propositions. Scrutiny of customer engagement studies in hospitality and tourism presents four sub-forms, including online customer engagement, tourist engagement, customer brand engagement and customer engagement behaviour. Additionally, the research methods, dimensionality and measurement scales of customer engagement are systematically reviewed. Originality/value This study is the first systematic review of customer engagement research in the field of hospitality and tourism. The original definition leads to an improved understanding of customer engagement. This study is also the first to propose a clear typology of customer engagement to enhance consistency in usage.

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Acceptance of contactless technology in the hospitality industry: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2Contactless service has gained popularity in the hospitality industry during the COVID-19 pandemic to ensure the safety of customers and employees. This study extends the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2), incorporating optimism and trust, to explore the use of contactless technology in hospitality service encounters. Importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) is applied to evaluate the performance of latent constructs and enrich the findings of PLS-SEM. This study contributes to the existing literature on hospitality service innovation and technology acceptance, and has managerial implications for service design in the context of the challenges posed by COVID-19.