sustainability Article Gender and Bankruptcy: A Hotel Survival Econometric Analysis María Escribano-Navas 1 and German Gemar 2, *   Citation: Escribano-Navas, M.; Gemar, G. Gender and Bankruptcy: A Hotel Survival Econometric Analysis. Sustainability 2021, 13, 6782. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su13126782 Academic Editors: Asad Mohsin, Ana Brochado and Andi Tamsang Andi Kele Received: 20 April 2021 Accepted: 4 June 2021 Published: 15 June 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 PhD Program in Tourism, Universidad de Málaga, 29071 Málaga, Spain; mescribano@uma.es 2 Department of Economics and Business Administration, Universidad de Málaga, Campus El Ejido, s/n, 29071 Malaga, Spain * Correspondence: ggemar@uma.es Abstract: This study’s objective was to understand how chief executive officers’ (CEOs) gender affects hotel businesses’ survival. Female managers’ influence has already been examined in other sectors, but researchers have not studied women CEOs’ role in hotel management and survival. A sample of 2615 Spanish hotel companies was examined during the period 2005–2018 for how their survival was affected by the variables of financial aspects, years of experience and the principal hotel executive’s gender. An econometrics-based survival analysis was conducted using a single complementary log-log model and panel data. The results indicate that some financial variables, such as sales, working capital to total assets ratio and each company’s experience, influence hotel businesses’ survival. The main finding was that women CEOs increase hotels’ survival rate. This CEO gender study is a novelty in the literature on hotel survival. Keywords: survival; hotel company; gender; executive management; COVID-19 1. Introduction Research on company survival has a long tradition, but hotel survival studies are scarcer. Spain has the second highest number of arrivals annually, after France, and Spain is only behind the United States in terms of tourism income [1]. The present research sought to fill this research gap to expand the existing knowledge on hotel survival. The question addressed was whether differences exist in the survival of female-led hotel businesses versus those headed by males. More studies are needed to deepen the current understanding of hotel companies’ survival because managers need help to overcome the current crisis in tourism triggered by COVID-19. Before this coronavirus appeared, various authors summed up the hospitality indus- try’s opportunities and challenges. Among the opportunities reported were new forms of financing through management contracts using real estate investment trusts and the emergence of new markets. The challenges mentioned were a better understanding of customers through big data analyses and co-creation of tourists’ experiences. The over- all results indicated that hotels should use technology including smart hotels, mobile applications and virtual environments, among others [2]. Hall [3] reports that globalisation and tourists’ reliance on mobile phones has increased the probability that world crises will affect international tourism in terms of impacts’ intensity and frequency. The cited author and other researchers have warned that the current model of tourism is fragile because, in many cases, liquidity and profitability are marginal. In addition, transport systems have excess capacity, and important phenomena such as Airbnb are not yet fully regulated [4,5]. The COVID-19 pandemic is changing societies, economies and tourism. Academic researchers need to analyse these changes to facilitate a shift towards a more sustainable tourism model [4], which requires recovery strategies to be activated. Prior studies have examined plans for disaster and crisis recovery in the tourism sector, finding negative factors that slow recuperation and positive aspects that favour it [6]. The latter cited authors Sustainability 2021, 13, 6782. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13126782 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability