FACTORS AFFECTING IMPLEMENTATION OF TECHNOLOGY IN HOTEL MANAGEMENT. A CASE STUDY OF SERENA HOTEL, NAIROBI, KENYA

Abstract

Hotel Management (HM) in Kenya continues to find ways of meeting the aspirations of the poor. One way they try to achieve this goal is by implementing technological innovations. This paper explored technological innovations in a sample of HM drawn from the Serena Hotel , Nairobi, Kenya. Chi-square test was used to test the relationship between characteristics of HM and the implementation of technological innovations. The Spearman’s rho was used for robustness checks. The findings revealed that computer based technology is the most widely adopted technology followed by telephone, counting machine, internet, satellite, fax machine, and Hotel robot waiters in that order. The study found the implementation of these technological innovations to be significantly related to factors such as board size, number of males in board, board tenure, frequency of board meeting, size of workforce, number of employees with tertiary education, investment in R&D, number of branches or outlets, and sources of funding. According to the HM, hotel policy, competition, regulatory and legal environment, infrastructure and firm specific factors such as client exit rate, human resource capacity and distributional challenges affect their innovative behavior. A key recommendation flowing out of the study is that, much as the implementation of technological innovation is good, it must be done with caution. A thorough risk assessment must be conducted by HM prior to the introduction of any new technology.