article · Travel Medicine and Infectious Disease
A quantitative survey of 453 hotel employees across Egypt evaluated their understanding of the monkeypox virus, focusing on transmission, symptoms, prevention, treatment, and information sources. The findings revealed that more than half of the surveyed staff possessed inadequate knowledge about the virus. Social media represented the main channel through which most workers gathered disease details, whilst the majority reported that their employers had neglected to provide them with any monkeypox information. Variations in staff knowledge levels were significantly influenced by demographic and employment factors, including age, marital status, education level, professional category, and tenure within the hotel. These insights provide governmental bodies and hospitality establishments with baseline evidence to develop targeted guidelines for preventing viral outbreaks within the sector.
The hospitality industry interacts heavily with international travellers, making hotel staff a critical frontline group during global viral outbreaks. Identifying significant knowledge gaps and a reliance on informal social media channels highlights the urgent need for structured workplace health communication. Without proactive employer training, hotel workers remain ill-equipped to recognise symptoms, prevent transmission, or manage emerging health risks effectively.
The findings can directly inform workplace training programmes, occupational health modules, and infection control protocols for the hospitality sector and public health agencies. Designed to correct widespread misinformation, these interventions target operational managers, human resource teams, and tourism regulators. While the underlying research is applied survey work rather than a physical product, the resulting operational guidelines are immediately actionable for deployment in hotel staff education and compliance programmes.
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BACKGROUND: The re-emerging human monkeypox virus (MPXV) poses a global threat. The rising number of confirmed MPXV cases worldwide is a significant reason for concern. This study aims to investigate (1) hotel employees' knowledge in Egypt of MPXV source, signs/symptoms, transmission, prevention, and treatment, (2) the primary sources of their information about MPXV, (3) whether or not they received information about MPXV from their hotels, and (4) the differences of employees' knowledge in terms of gender, age, marital status, level of education, type of contract, professional category, hotel department, type of hotel, seniority in the hotel, and the number of hotel rooms. METHODS: Using a quantitative approach, we collected data from 453 employees in Egyptian hotels via a web-based questionnaire. The survey included questions regarding the MPXV source, signs/symptoms, transmission, prevention, and treatment, as well as its primary information sources. The questionnaire also included questions regarding participants' demographics and hotel characteristics. RESULTS: The findings indicated that more than half of hotel employees have inadequate knowledge of MPXV. Additionally, the majority of employees selected social media as their primary source of MPXV-related information. Surprisingly, most participants reported that their hotels neglected to provide them with the MPXV's information. Age, marital status, education, professional category, and tenure in the hotel all have a significant impact on their MPXV knowledge level. CONCLUSION: The current paper presents significant implications for both theory and practice. This study provides government agencies and hotels with guidelines for preventing the outbreak of MPXV. According to our knowledge, this is the first study conducted with hotel employees in the MPXV Egyptian context.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2023.102574
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