Corporate Image as a Resilience Strategy for South African Tourism and Hospitality Enterprises Success

Tourism and hospitality enterprises and tourist destinations have been grappling with building, maintaining, and enhancing good corporate image and resilience in political, economic, social, technological, natural disasters, and pandemics. There has been a growing realization to formulate corporate image dimensions that match the everchanging world of, travel, tourism, and hospitality context. The study aims to explore corporate image as a resilience strategy in the South African tourism and hospitality industry and the implications thereof. The chapter adopted a qualitative research paradigm, utilizing a literature survey, and a case study of Sun International Group, Tsogo Sun Group of hotels, and City Hotels and Lodges group of hotels. Content and thematic analysis were conducted using themes such as Corporate image, resilience, and destination image. Findings reveal that corporate image is a combination of different facets including company characteristics, company activities, customer loyalty, consistency, customer satisfaction, brand image, green initiatives, trust, customers, differentiation, and brand equity which should appease all stakeholders including clients, shareholders, employees, community, media, suppliers and politicians. The study implies that when the hospitality enterprise invests in corporate image they will satisfy various stakeholders and in turn reap the benefits of continued business, loyalty, customer satisfaction, positive perceived service quality, profitability, competitive advantage sustainability, and resilience. Various resilience strategies are recommended including proper crisis management, customer excellence, consistency, and green innovation.