Outsourcing Strategies And Competitive Advantage Of Hotels In Nairobi, Kenya

Abstract

Outsourcing is the procedure of engaging external organizations for service formerly executed by internal employees. This has been in practice for quite a while, and a lion's share of it is concentrated on achieving operational efficiencies and competitive edge (Efling & Bave, 1994). The influence of outsourcing techniques on the competitive advantage of star-rated hotels in Nairobi County was the main topic of this study. The study's main objective was to investigate how outsourcing strategy affected Nairobi County's star-rated hotels' ability to compete. The study used a descriptive survey study design and a structured questionnaire to gather primary data. Descriptive statistics and simple linear regression were then used to evaluate the data quantitatively. Results indicated that the majority of hotels in Nairobi County have used outsourcing techniques, Results in particular demonstrated that a significant amount of outsourcing was done for non-core business programs, logistics operations, employee training and development, IT services, human resources, and tax processes. Further, the study found that outsourcing had a significant positive influence on competitive advantage of hotels in Nairobi county. The study concluded that outsourcing strategies can be used to create unique or important positions that involve various sets of undertakings when deciding which competitive strategies to adopt. The recommendations based on the findings and conclusions included hotels in Nairobi county taking advantage of the numerous opportunities to outsource functions that are not core to their business and setting up guidelines to control the process of outsourcing. The study suggests that further research should be conducted to address the gaps of methodology and context that could not be addressed by this study due to limitations faced by the researcher.