Customer Relationship Management Practices in the Hotel Industry in Kenya

Abstract

With the increasing competition that businesses especially in hotels industry face today in order to survive, firms have to adjust their approach towards customer relationship management practices and come up with response strategies for dealing with the highly competitive environment. Traditionally hotels are more focused on the physical product and services. Hotels industry today is waking up to consumers who demand consistent delivery of the brand promise, changing needs and sensitivity to socio-political both locally and globally. This study sought to determine customer relationship management practices in the hotels industry in Kenya. The study was conducted through a cross sectional descriptive survey. The study used semi structured questionnaire as a primary data collection instrument. The questionnaires was administered thorough sales account managers of the 22 hotels comprising of 6 five star hotels, 8 four star hotels and 8 three star hotels in terms of rankings, which represents 10% of target population. Data collected was quantitative; analysis was by descriptive statistics and presented in form of charts.The study findings illustrates indeed there are several customers relationship management practices known in the hotel industry. However it is emerging that most of hotels are faced with challenges in effectively implementing all the known CRM practices which is mainly attributed to lack of technological skills, organizational goodwill, status quo and budgeting allocations towards successful implementation of the same. The study concludes that CRM Practices is an important component because of incremental impact it has to the market share. The CRM practices tracks customers interactions with the firm and allows employees to instantly draw information about the customers such as past sales, services, recalls, experiences, feedback and trends of universal problems. The study is recommended that managers and organizational heads should not only continuously strive to support CRM activities in the hotels, but also embrace all CRM practices that make the hotels more competitive to ever changing customer’s trends.