Terrorism and Tourism: Kenyaas Resilient Tourism Industry Survival Strategies
The objective of the study was to investigate the impact of terrorism incidences on hotels in Kenya and the survival strategies used by the destination. The study hypothesized that there was no significant relationship between the respondent’s work experience and their opinion on the effect of terror attacks. It also hypothesized that there was no significant difference between the respondent’s gender and their emotional reactions to a terror attack. Qualitative data was collected through interviews while quantitative data was collected using researcher administered questionnaires. A total of 200 questionnaires were distributed from which 138 were successfully completed. The study noted that although there was a weak positive correlation between respondents work experience, and opinions on the effect of the terror attacks to their business this relationship was insignificant at p=0.05 (r=0.04, p=0.273) meaning work experience had little influence. Likewise, 41% of male strongly agreed that they were traumatized as they continued with their duties as compared to 51% of female respondents. The finding indicated that gender did not influence their feelings (U=1923, P=0.37). Majority of the respondents 64% agreed that it had taken more time to achieve short-term goals while a 64% of them strongly agreed that it had taken longer time than anticipated for the hotel to achieve short and medium-term goals. More than 65% agreed that their long-term goals have been affected and 71% of them have had their companies adjust their marketing strategies to cope with the changing environment. From these findings, the author concluded that security incidences have affected short, medium and long term goals of most hotels in Kenya.
