Browsing by Author "Aberi, Lorna"

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    Competitive Strategies and Organizational Performance of Five-Star Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya
    (Kenyatta University, 2025-05) Aberi, Lorna
    The hospitality sector has been significantly impacted by increasing complexity and dynamism, continuous technological advancements, the influx of new competitors, and most recently, the global Covid-19 pandemic. Organizational performance reflects a company’s ability to achieve its goals through a commitment to learning, operational excellence, and a strong focus on both customers and employees. While various studies have explored the role of competitive strategies in industries such as telecommunications, limited empirical research has focused on the hospitality sector particularly five-star hotels in Nairobi. This study seeks to bridge that gap by examining the relationship between competitive strategies namely cost leadership, differentiation, and focus and hotel performance outcomes. The primary aim is to assess how these strategies influence the effectiveness of five-star hotels in Nairobi. Specifically, the study investigates the relationship between cost leadership tactics and hotel performance, the impact of product/service differentiation, and the role of focus strategies in addressing current and future challenges. The research is grounded in the Resource-Based View (RBV), Porter’s Generic Competitive Strategies, and the SERVQUAL Model. A descriptive research design was adopted, targeting five-star hotels in Nairobi, two of which were forced to close during the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020. A simple random sampling method was used, and structured questionnaires were administered to collect primary data. Findings indicate that cost leadership had the greatest influence, driven by long-term supplier partnerships that reduced operational expenses. Product differentiation through innovative services and technology had a moderate effect on customer satisfaction and loyalty. Focus strategies, such as tiered pricing models, showed a positive but weaker influence. Collectively, these strategies improved hotel performance, measured by customer satisfaction, market share, staff engagement, and service efficiency. Policy recommendations include promoting strategic procurement with local suppliers, mandating continuous professional development for hotel leaders, and offering tax incentives to encourage technological innovation. Additionally, establishing standardized quality assurance frameworks and inclusive pricing models is essential. From a managerial perspective, hotel operators should formalize supplier agreements, invest in innovation, adopt data-driven segmentation strategies, and strengthen loyalty programs. Leadership development and performance monitoring tools such as KPIs and balanced scorecards are vital for sustaining competitiveness. Future research should extend to other geographic regions or tourism sub-sectors, such as air travel, to test the generalizability of these findings and support the development of globally competitive strategies.
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    Competitive Strategies and Organizational Performance of Five-Star Hotels in Nairobi City County, Kenya
    (Strategic Journals, 2025-09) Aberi, Lorna; Wanyoike, Rosemarie
    This study investigated how competitive strategies associate with the effectiveness of five-star hotels in the city of Nairobi. This study was conducted with all eleven five-star hotels that had been registered with the Tourism Regulatory Authority (TRA) as of the initial three months of 2020. Two five-star hotels in the county of Nairobi were forced to shut down amid the Covid-19 outbreak of 2020. The researcher used census methods to ensure that all members of the limited and manageable-sized population were included in the analysis. A survey was conducted in which participants provided their answers to predetermined questions with the intention of collecting data. The questionnaire was designed to include both open and close-ended questions, and a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) served as the guide to record the responses. The research employed both descriptive and inferential statistics. In addition to analyzing quantitative data with descriptive statistics (e.g., means and standard deviation), the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) also examined the same data and presented it in a tabulated format, bar charts, and graphs. The findings showed that costs leadership had a very huge influence in improving the effectiveness of the five-star hotels. The results also showed that applying various product differentiation strategies helped to create an appealing image to the target clients. It was noted focus strategies had minimal albeit positive impacts on the selected hotels. Since they had positive impacts on the performance of these hotels, they were considered to be at the centre of the five-star’s hotels expansion plan. Since the three specific objectives were met, it was concluded that the applied competitive strategies had a direct relationship with the effectiveness of the selected hotels in the Kenyan capital.