| dc.description.abstract | The business environment has become extremely competitive and complex.
Organizations must be flexible in order to adapt to changes, to compete effectively and
thus prosper and grow. In other words, companies should be willing to change, to renew
their vision, their strategy and structure, to develop the abilities to sense changes, to
become innovative and incorporate their work force in the change process, so as to take
advantage of the challenges presented. The research objective of the study was to
determine the strategic responses to the changes in external environment by tour
operators in Nairobi Kenya. The adopted cross sectional survey research design. The
population of the study consisted of all the tour firms operating in Nairobi. According to
the Kenya Association of Tour Operators (2012) there were 250 tour firms operating in
Nairobi. The study adopted systematic sampling in which the researcher obtained the list
of the population and then take a sample in which every 4th event was picked for the
research and this resulted in 63 tour companies been selected for the study. The study
used primary data which was collected using self-administered questionnaires. The data
was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The
findings of the study was that the tour operators have adopted marketing strategies,
change management, information communication technology, leadership and culture and
restructuring in order to respond to environmental changes. Marketing strategies was
achieved through customer needs identification and satisfaction, offering competitive
packages to the tourists, analyzing competitors’ costs, prices before fixing prices of its
products, undertaking market research to establish the tourist needs, use of diversification
and development of new products, undertaking aggressive advertisement and promotion
to both local and international tourists and establishing relationship marketing. Change
management was undertaken and resulted in implement procedures and/or technologies
to deal with changes in the environment and to profit from changing opportunities,
linking change management with operational change and every aspect of the organization
in relation to dynamic external environment, establishing a structured methodology for
responding to changes in the business environment and change management in the
company being multi-disciplinary, touching all aspects of the organization.
First and foremost the study established that the tour operators use different strategies to
respond to the changes in the environment and it is recommended that the management of
the companies should inculcate a practice of continuous review of the state of
competition in the tourism industry so that they do not react to the challenges brought
about by the existing or new competitors to avoid panic situation which will lead to
adoption of strategies which will not enable the tour company to realize the desired
objectives. | en |
