الفهرس 
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Abstract
Hotel rooms are the major source of hotel revenue that generates up to seventy percent of a hotel’s total revenues. In some hotels, guest rooms represent the only source of revenue. However, due to the vulnerability and perishability of the hotel industry, there are several issues, such political, economic, environmental, competition, etc., that can negatively impact on demand for hotel rooms and lead to serious downturn. Witnessing demand downturn for hotel rooms leads to many negative impacts at a hotel level, such as decreasing occupancy rates and reducing hotel revenues, and at a country level, such as declining GDP, reducing foreign currency earnings and increasing unemployment levels.
This research is one of the few studies to investigate the problem of demand downturn for hotel rooms. It represents an exploratory study that aims to provide an enhanced understanding of a serious issue that threatens the hotel industry; i.e. demand downturn. The study develops a proposed model and provides a number of recommendations that enable an effective management of periods of demand downturn for hotel rooms.
The literature review covers issues relevant to demand downturn for hotel rooms, such as: hotel demand characteristics; categories; levels and management; reasons for demand downturn (including both external and internal factors); negative impacts of demand downturn; managerial practices of handling period of demand downturn. The literature ends by providing a conceptual model of managing demand downturn.
A mixed methods approach, combining both quantitative and qualitative methods, was adopted in this study using pragmatism as philosophical stance and survey study as a research methodology. Primary data collection involved using multiple sources of evidence, including questionnaire survey of Cairo hotel managers; semi-structured interviews with employees in three departments in the Ministry of Tourism; document analysis to investigate relevant documents including United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNTWO) statistical reports, the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism statistical reports and media reports.
The results of this study show that Cairo hotels witnessed demand downturn on a regular basis. There were several reasons that had negatively impacted on demand for Cairo hotels and led to witnessing serious periods of downturn, such as: political events; financial crises; poor facilities of hotels; low-quality services and products. Research findings also revealed that the performance of both individual hotel and the official bodies in relation to downturn management was insufficient for handling serious periods of demand downturn. Although some of the practices they had undertaken were perceived as effective, the general performance was perceived to be ineffective.
This study has contributed to theory through providing extensive primary and secondary data that enables a better understanding of downturn management in hotels and through developing a conceptual model for managing demand downturn for hotel services. It has also contributed to the industry through developing a proposed model and providing a number of recommendations for both individual hotel and official bodies in relation to downturn management in hotels.
Keywords: Hotel Demand, Capacity Management, demand Downturn, Downturn Management.