Strategic Management Practices and Competitive Advantage of International Hotels in Nairobi City, Kenya

Abstract

Companies today are not only looking at the short-term framework of their businesses but are looking at lasting and planned outcomes. Strategic management leads to vision and foresight hence unity of purpose, direction, commitment and logical choice of actions. Managers who are mainly used in managing daily routine issues find it a major challenge to apply strategic management practice as a means of managing the enterprise. The hospitality industry in Kenya faces numerous strategic challenges emanating from the political, social, economic, legal and technological environment. Frequent changes in the environment affects the international hotels among other related hospitality institutions. The general objective of the study will be to investigate the strategic management practices that influence competitive advantage of International hotel in Nairobi city Kenya. The study was guided by following theories environment dependency theory, institutional theory and competitive advantage theory. This study used the descriptive research design. Primary data was collected by use of a questionnaire which was semi-structured. The questionnaire was both open and close ended questions. The strategic management practices have positive influence on the competitive advantage. The multiple linear regressions revealed that strategic management practices are significant predicator of competitive advantage of international hotels in Nairobi City. The study recommends that there is need for Hotel management to provide necessary tools that are need for effective regular evaluation and control of strategy.