Hotel and Manager Characteristics and Technology Orientation Strategy

Management and hotel characteristics can strongly influence the decision to support technology orientation strategy in luxury hotels. In the rapidly changing hotel business environment, a strong technology orientation holds the key to the strategic direction that will lead to sustained competitive advantage. Nonetheless, studies relating technology orientation strategy and manager and hotel characteristics in the hotel industry in Eastern Africa are scare. Based on Resource Based View, and a sample of 247 senior hotel managers, this paper provides an analysis of hotel and manager characteristics and their relationship with technology orientation in the luxury hotel industry in Kenya. The paper uses empirical data and shows that age of hotel (rho=0.14; ρ<0.05) and size of hotel (rho=0.22; ρ<0.05) had a positive correlation with technology orientation in luxury hotels at the 5% level of significance. On the other hand, age of senior managers (rho=-0.13; ρ<0.05) had a negative correlation with technology orientation, while level of education among senior managers (rho=0.14; ρ<0.05) had a positive correlation with technology orientation in luxury hotels. Implications of the findings for hotel management practice and research are provided in the paper.