Abstract

Tourism is regarded as a sector susceptible to crises and disasters. Military conflicts affect not only the destinations where those conflicts are held but also the wider region, including destinations located in different countries. As it is already evidenced, the Palestinian conflict has affected the tourist flows in all of the eastern Mediterranean region, resulting in a sharp decline in demand and hotel occupancies. The hotels of Greece and Turkey (these are the two major destinations in the Eastern Mediterranean and also two of the largest destinations worldwide) have already experienced the side effects of the military conflict in Palestine. Under this perspective, the two countries’ hotel companies are in the process of handling the effects of the Palestinian conflict and creating appropriate contingency plans in order to increase their resilience. From this perspective, this study evaluates the impacts of the military conflict in Palestine on the Greek and Turkish hotels and their willingness to use information technology (IT) further in order to cope with the current crisis. The study is based on two nationwide researches on Greek and Turkish hotel managers. Drawing from a sample of 400 responses in each of the two researches, the study employs fsQCA (fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) in order to examine the complexity of hotel decision-making related to IT use as a means for handling the Palestinian conflict. This examination includes the antecedents of the hotel website, social media, innovation, IT competence, and hotel resilience, whilst the study also evaluates the categorical variables of the hotel’s operational mode and category ranking. The necessity of the simple conditions is evaluated through the use of NCA (Necessary Condition Analysis). The study also employs list-wise deletion (exclusion of responses from the dataset) since this is considered the best method for handling the partially completed questionnaires in order to reduce the study bias. The fsQCA results indicated that four sufficient pathways were generated in the research held in Greece, and three sufficient solutions were produced in the research conducted in Turkey. However, after the employment of NCA, in both researches, the findings generated the same three acceptable sufficient complex configurations related to: (1) the orientation of IT (2) the effect of the military conflict in Palestine, and (3) the enterprising externalisation of IT. The study contributes in both theoretical and methodological domains. Theoretically, it provides complexity evidence of the hotels’ decision-making concerning the way they cope with the Palestinian conflict and their willingness to further use IT. The methodological contribution is related to the use of fsQCA, a method that has only recently started to be used in the tourism and hospitality domains. The study also offers several managerial and practical implications and insights able to assist the hotel industry in handling major crises (such as the Palestinian conflict) through the IT use.