Influence of E-Tourism Policies on Travel Business Profitability in Nairobi City County, Kenya

Abstract

The new information era has grown drastically overtime with key stakeholders giving considerable attention to adoption of e-commerce. Travel and Tourism businesses have increasingly adopted e-commerce, which has helped to link key market participants thus enabling easy gathering of information for both consumers and suppliers. E-commerce has brought about a revolutionary change in the way Travel and Tourism business is being conducted away from brick-and-mortar operations. This has changed the way consumers make decisions on personalized travel packages using websites to obtain roadmaps, accommodation, activity programming, air fares, restaurants, entertainment and calendars of local events. This study explored to establish the influence of e-tourism policies on travel business profitability in Nairobi City County, Kenya. This study adopted descriptive research design, which employed mixed method of collecting quantitative and qualitative primary data. The study was conducted in Nairobi City, Kenya’s capital due to its robust economy. The study targeted 172 travel agents that use e-tourism in their travel businesses. The study also targeted travel agent professionals whose docket is marketing, ICT and management of travel businesses. Slovin’s formula was used to calculate the sample size of 120 travel agents. Simple random sampling using the list of registered travel agents under the Kenya Association of Travel Agents as the sample frame was used to select the travel agents to be enrolled in the study. Purposive sampling was employed to select three (3) managers from each sampled travel agent giving a total of 360 managers. Semi-structured questionnaires were used to collect quantitative and qualitative data primary data from the sampled managers. A pre-test of the questionnaires was carried out involving travel agents that were not sampled for the main study to determine its reliability. Descriptive statistics such as frequencies, modes, means, variances and standard deviations was used to analyse quantitative data using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 22. Hypothesis testing using Chi Square test analysis revealed that the significance value 0.484 is greater than 0.05, and hence the null hypothesis is accepted and alternative hypothesis is rejected. This implies that measures e-tourism policies do not influence travel business profitability. The study concluded though e-tourism policies do not influence travel business profitability is critical in the development of e-tourism in Kenya. Keywords: E-commerce, e-tourism, Travel and Tourism business, Tourism Policy, & Profitability