Resilience Building Strategies and Service Delivery of Five Star Hotels in Nairobi City County During Covid 19 Pandemic

Abstract

This study focused on resilience building strategies and service delivery of five star hotels in Nairobi City County during COVID 19 pandemic. The objectives of the study were: to establish the degree to which five star hotels in Nairobi City County have adopted resilience building strategies in service delivery; and to find out the relationship between resilience buiding strategies and service delivery of five star hotels in Nairobi City Count during COVID 19 pandemic. The study carried out a survey and used a descriptive cross-sectional research design targeting 11 five star hotels in Nairobi City county. Data iwas icollected iusing iweb-based igoogle iform iquestionnaires ifrom ioperations imanagers, imarketing imanagers iand ifinance imanagers ior itheir iequivalents. iAll ithe iquestionnaires iwere isent ithrough iemail iand iWhatsApp ito ispecific imanagers. iA itotal iof i28 iresponses iwere ireceived iand iwere ideemed ifit ifor ianalysis. iAs irelates ito ithe iextent ito iwhich ifive istar ihotels iin iNairobi iCity iCounty ihave iadopted iresilience ibuilding istrategies, ifindings ireveal iit iis ito ia imoderate ito ilarge iextent ias iindicated iby imeans iof ithree iand iabove. iRegarding ithe irelationship ibetween ithe ivariables, iresults ireveal ithat imarket iorientation, isupply ichain ioptimization, istrategic icorporate ireorganization iand ibusiness imodel itransformation istrategies iand iservice idelivery iare ipositively irelated ias iindicated iby ipositive icoefficients iproduced iby ithe istudy‟s imultiple iregression imodel. However, innovation strategies in the hotels were found to have a negative relationship with service delivery. Though the hotels have adopted the strategies to a moderate to large extent, resilience building strategies had a 46% composite impact on service delivery. The study recommends that hotels apply a concerted and consistent efforts to restore the sector on to a positive trajectory of service delivery. Further, managers should interrogate the kind of innovations being implemetened as they could most likely be embracing technologies and innovations that do not resonate well with both the workers and customer to such an extent that service delivery is affected. There is a chance that the innovations adopted do not satisfactorily meet the requirements and measures of quality service delivery as guided by SERVQUAL scale that fronts five dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. Further studies should be explore the actual reasons for the negative relationship between innovation and service delivery in hospitality industry though a mixed method approach.