Continuous Improvement and Innovation During Covid-19 in East Africa: Implications for Future Tourism Policy and Planning

Continuous improvement and innovation are important attributes of tourism growth and business success. However, the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic created a new threat to global and Africa’s health, wellbeing, and economy of people. The pandemic highlighted a critical need for public health capacity and a call for improvements and innovations within the tourism industry. This chapter assesses the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry in East Africa; and analyzes the innovations and digitization initiatives in hospitality and tourism sectors in the region during the pandemic; including an exploration of policies and plans of innovation for rebuilding the post-pandemic tourism industry. In East Africa, innovations in the hospitality and tourism sectors showcase significant milestones in fighting pandemic spread and encouraging international travel and tourism. Several research methods were employed to review the literature and analyze the data, using a mixture of secondary sources of data. Secondary data sources included a review and analysis of a range of publications on the status of continuous improvements and innovations from the region, and documentation from the Partner States on the status of hospitality and tourism sectors. The findings provide an analysis of policy research on the linkages between continuous improvements during COVID-19 and the performance of tourism at the regional and national/domestic levels. The findings evaluated innovations in the tourism industry during and after the pandemic period across East Africa. The chapter has propounded a continuous improvements and innovation framework for tourism during and post-COVID-19 and recommends unique opportunities for rethinking policies and plans for rebuilding tourism.