Does COVID-19 Affect Safety and Security Perception in the Hospitality Industry? A Romanian Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Manuscript ID: Sustainability -1380416.

September 2021

The new version of the article entitled "The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Occupational Health and Safety in the Hospitality Industry. A Romanian Case Study"  with a new ID Sustainability -1380416 to be published in this prestigious journal "Sustainability" has not only responded to all the aspects suggested in my previous revision which was revised in May 2021. Furthermore, this new version has substantially improved its initial version.

Therefore, my assessment to the editor is acceptance for publication.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The main goal of the study is not well clarified in the abstract. Generally, the paper is not focused and it's hard to read.
2. In the last paragraph of the intro the authors state that "the main aim of the article is to investigate the issues regarding the safety of the working environment in terms of SARS-CoV-2 infection". This is quite vague and should be expressed more clearly.
3. There are several typos and grammar mistakes. For instance the sentence in the abstract"The magnitude of safety measures taken had a positive one impact on the customers"
4. Figure 1 seems not directly related to the focus of the study 
5. There is no discussion of survey attrition. Who are the subjects that did not answer the sruvey.
6. The conclusions are not fully supported by the data and are somewhat speculative.
7. Tables and figures are not self-explanatory

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has improved after the last revisions.

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Journal Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) .Manuscript ID sustainability-1207828

Title The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Occupational Health and Safety in the Hospitality Industry

In this study, the following aim is proposed “The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Occupational Health 2 and Safety in the Hospitality Industry”. The study is carried out by posing 10 hypotheses that are statistically analyzed. Seven of them for employees and three for customers. The paper has some shortcomings that should be improved before it is considered for publication.

1- In the title I consider that it is necessary to add the country where the case study takes place. Romania

2- The key words should be revised as many of them do not say anything, in particular they should be eliminated: hypotheses; survey; Cramer's V; Spearman.

3-The abstract should be revised to provide the conclusions of the work, in its current state it is a bit poor.

4- The references in the text should be revised, many of them are not in the numbered format. E.g. Line 42 [Ivkov, 2019; Zenker, 2020]. In the event of natural disasters … are references 9 and 47 respectively? 

5-The classification of income should be put in euros or dollars, instead of the local currency (Lei).

6-Figures 3 and 4 are in the section before the discussion section, which is where they are discussed. Review.

7- HoReCa is often used in the text to refer to the hospitality industry, but the advantage is not really apparent. I propose to use it without abbreviation. And of course not to put it in the abstract or in the conclusions.

8-No gender study has been carried out on all this work, since the information is available, it would be advisable to carry out a gender study to find out if men and women feel the same way.

9-I recommend not writing in the first person. E.g. We …

10- In table 2 and some figures for the decimal separator a comma has been used, replace with a point as decimal separator to avoid confusion.

11-A large part of the paper, section 4.2. is devoted to the customer base, but this is not reflected in the title, the abstract or the conclusions. I believe that this issue should be better reflected in the paper.

 

Reviewer 2 Report

The article entitled "The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Occupational Health and Safety in the Hospitality Industry" is an interesting, and original study in the field of Occupational Health and Safety research as well as on pandemic management due to COVID-19 in the hospitality industry. Its abstract is adequate in terms of its structure and content. The topic fits well into the scope of the Sustainability journal. The state of the art on the subject is sufficiently comprehensive. References to related work are appropriate. The title seems applicable and appropriate and the references provided seem to be sufficient.

However, I regret to say that my verdict as a reviewer of this manuscript is that it is not acceptable.

The following are the reasons that led me to make this decision, which can be taken by the authors as suggestions to consider in future reviews of their study:

• Substantially, this manuscript is seriously flawed in terms of interpretation of results, presentation of discussion and conclusions drawn, and does not meet the requirements of this prestigious journal.
• The referencing style used for citations in the manuscript does NOT fully follow the standard referencing style recommended by this journal. In line 42, you use two citations incorrectly. References should be identified as non-superscript and Arabic numerals in squared brackets, in the order they appear in the text (Vancouver style). In addition, I'm afraid it must have affected the rest of the citations in the manuscript. Please revise it completely.
• The term HoReCa appears for the first time in the Abstract section. It appears again on line 92 and 201 at the very least. However, at no point does this acronym appear clearly defined, at least not explicitly. It creates a great deal of confusion, as it is difficult to follow.
• In section 3 "Materials and method", it indicates that its fundamental methodological tool for carrying out this study was the completion of two questionnaires of 16 and 9 questions for workers in the hotel sector and customers in the second one. However, at no point are the 25 questions used clearly and explicitly stated. Nor do they provide details of how these two questionnaires were carried out, how they were evaluated, with what number of experts, with what methodology, with how many rounds of evaluation, etc. ......
• There is very detailed information on the 10 hypotheses raised, but no information on the questions set out in the two questionnaires. These questions should at least be provided as an annex. The relationship of questions and their association with the 10 hypotheses is also unknown. This affects figures 3 and 4 as it is not known to which question each answer in these figures corresponds.
• It uses a very acceptable statistical tool such as the R programme. And the statistical treatment used is sufficiently exposed, but lacking the data obtained from each of the questions used, it is impossible to verify it.
• What does Level 8 refer to in Hypothesis 10? This hypothesis is not understood; it should be explained or reformulated. You return to Level 8 in the conclusion section but as it is not contextualised, it is not understood. It probably refers to the health alert level in Romania, but this is not explicitly explained either.
• In the Discussion section, I understand that the 9 points reported at the beginning of this section are results and not discussion. Something similar happens in the final conclusions section; Table 2 are results and never conclusions.

Some minor issues observed:

• In the abstract, it says "the perception regarding the risk of customers", but I understand that the perception also lies with the workers.
• It is not clear what is meant by the opening sentence of the introduction: "The hospitality industry is an umbrella industry".
• In line 56 you use the acronym GDP. Describe its meaning initially and henceforth use only the acronym. The same applies to all acronyms used in your manuscript.
• Respondents' income level in an international currency such as Euros or Dollars.
• An element of debate to be introduced: In Romania, if a worker falls ill with COVID-19 during the course of his work, do the labour authorities classify his sick leave as an occupational disease or as an occupational accident?