Article Strategic responses to COVID-19: The case of tour operators in Vietnam Binh Do Department of Strategic Management, Faculty of Business Administration, Thuongmai University, Hanoi, Vietnam Ninh Nguyen Asia Pacific College of Business & Law, Charles Darwin University, Casuarina, Australia; Business Sustainability Research Group, Thuongmai University, Hanoi, Vietnam Clare D’Souza Department of Economics, Finance and Marketing, La Trobe Business School, Bundoora, Australia Huu Duc Bui Faculty of Business Administration, Thuongmai University, Hanoi, Vietnam Thi Nguyen Hong Nguyen Faculty of Hospitality and Tourism, Thuongmai University, Hanoi, Vietnam Abstract The COVID-19 outbreak has challenged the global tourism economy. It has particularly threatened the survival of tourism firms in developing countries especially those with the greatest growth of international visitors, such as Vietnam. This study aims to highlight the impact of COVID-19 on tour operators in Vietnam and explore their strategic responses to the crisis. Data were obtained from a recent survey initiated by the National Tourism Advisory Board and 32 in-depth interviews with managers of selected firms. The survey results demonstrate that the key influences of COVID-19 include plummeting revenue, increased costs, and employee redundancy. Furthermore, the majority of tour operators are aware of the need for restructuring and expect financial support from the government to overcome the crisis. The findings from the interviews reveal that tour operators focus more on short and medium-term strategies (i.e., retrenchment, persevering, and exiting) rather than long-term planning (i.e., innovating) in response to COVID-19. This study advances the knowledge and application of response-to-crisis strategies in tourism research, and its findings have practical implications for managers and policymakers in times of exceptional crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Keywords COVID-19, crisis, strategic response, tour operators, tourism, emerging market, Vietnam Introduction Coronavirus (COVID-19), which was declared as a global pandemic by World Health Organisation (WHO), has swept across 215 countries and territories with 4,08,90,712 confirmed cases and 1,126,351 Corresponding author: Ninh Nguyen, Asia Pacific College of Business & Law, Charles Darwin University, Casuarina, Northern Territory, Australia. Email: ninh.nguyen@cdu.edu.au; ninhnguyen@tmu.edu.vn Tourism and Hospitality Research 0(0) 1–13 ! The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1467358421993902 journals.sagepub.com/home/thr