INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING ON PERFORMANCE IN HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY IN KENYA: A CASE OF KENYATTA INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION CENTRE

Abstract

There are various platforms provided by the social media networks such as Face book, LinkedIn, YouTube and Twitter to the marketing of products and services for the hospitality industry. Social network offers media technologies that can facilitate online functionality and monitoring perspectives wherein the data gathered can be used to develop their services for customer satisfaction. The hospitality industry can market themselves in social media and networking. Hospitality industry can use social media to engage customers and clients in dialogue and recognize their needs. Through these networking sites, hospitality industry can interact with consumers before, during, and after the vacation experience. Social media is relatively new and the advantages are abundance such as it is affordable, it is viral and has the potential to spread brand awareness quickly and far and it is said to be able to develop link baits, attention and massive amounts of traffic. However, it may not be appropriate for all hotel chains. The purpose of the study was to establish the effects of social media marketing on organizational performance in the hospitality industry in Kenya specifically Kenyatta International Convention Centre. The study adopted a descriptive survey and the targeted population was 70 employees drawn from different departments. A census survey design was carried out. The data was analyzed with help of SPSS version 22 and Excel. According to study findings; it was notable that there existed a strong positive relationship between the indepedent variables and depedent variable. This implied that these variables were very significant therefore needed to be considered in any effort to boost performance in hospitality industry in Kenya in the study area. Based on the study findings, the study concluded that performance in hospitality industry in Kenya was affected by social networking sites followed by customer acquisition cost were the major factors of social media that mostly affect performance in hospitality industry in Kenya. The current study should therefore be expanded further in future in order to determine the effect of strategic legal framework on performance of hospitality industry