Research Proposal: Repute Hotels Expansion in Kenyan Ecotourism

This research proposal investigates the potential expansion of Repute Hotels, a London-based hotel group, into the burgeoning Kenyan ecotourism market. The study aims to analyze the feasibility of this expansion by examining tourism demand and trends, identifying key issues faced by hotels in the region, and proposing a comprehensive research methodology. The literature review explores the expansion of hotel groups into new markets, the specific characteristics of tourism demand in Kenya, and the challenges faced by hotels. The research methodology outlines the research philosophy, approach, types of investigation, data collection methods (including primary and secondary data), sampling techniques, and data analysis methods. The proposal concludes with a timeline for the project, detailing the key activities and their duration. The study is designed to provide valuable insights and recommendations for Repute Hotels' strategic decision-making regarding its potential venture into the Kenyan ecotourism sector.

Research proposal
for
the expansion of
Repute Hotels
into the
Kenyan ecotourism
market

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
Aim: ............................................................................................................................................1
Objective: ...................................................................................................................................1
Rationale: ...................................................................................................................................1
LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................2
Expansion of hotels group into new market................................................................................2
Tourism Demand and Trends......................................................................................................2
Issues faced by hotels..................................................................................................................3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY.....................................................................................................3
Research philosophy...................................................................................................................4
Research Approach.....................................................................................................................4
Types of research investigation...................................................................................................4
Data Collection............................................................................................................................4
Sampling.....................................................................................................................................5
Data Analysis..............................................................................................................................5
Timeline......................................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7
APPENDIX......................................................................................................................................9

INTRODUCTION
Hospitality in hotel is a type of facility which provides a place in which a person feels
relax and spend their time peacefully (Das and Chatterjee, 2015). This report analyse the
feasibility of expanding London hotel group, that is, Repute Hotels into Kenya's ecotourism
market. The title of the report is Research Proposal for the expansion of Repute Hotels into the
Kenyan ecotourism market.
Aim:
The main aim of the study is to analyse and explore the feasibility of expanding London
hotel group Repute Hotels group into new Kenya's ecotourism market.
Objective:
While expanding the London hotel group, that is, Repute hotels into new Kenya's
ecotourism market; there are various kinds of objectives that can be identified which are as
follows:
 To analyse and explore the feasibility of expanding hotel into Kenya's ecotourism market.
 To identify the key issues which are faced while expanding the business into new
markets.
 To analyse tourist's demand and trends for Kenya.
 To assess the current and future position by exploring cross-cultural and environmental
issues.
 To provide a complete recommendation for accomplishing desirous objectives.
Rationale:
It can be performed in order to analysis and identify the positioning of London hotel
group Repute hotels by considering its occupancy and trading rate which is profitable or not. It
also determines the positive impact which cited hotel face while entering into the new market.
Moreover, this report helps to analysis the impact on some external factors and its detailed
informations which highly influenced London hotel group Repute hotels while entering into the
Kenyan ecotourism market. Research also helps to understand the current position, such as, its
growing market and popularity which make positive impact on London hotel group Repute
hotels group in order to deal with their operations.
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LITERATURE REVIEW
Expansion of hotels group into new market
According to Mowforth and Munt (2015) tourism industry makes great contribution in
the development of country's economy. To expand London Repute Hotels into Kenyan
ecotourism market, it highly affect the political, economical, cultural and environmental factors
for the development. By expanding the hotel in the cited country helps to become a foreign
exchange earner and also generate new employment opportunities to their local citizens. It is also
beneficial to diversify the local economy and attract new money for both internal and external
sources. As per van Hoof and Steins (2017) point of view, to expanded Repute hotel group into
Kenyan ecotourism also make some negative impact such as inflation, low wage rates to the
workers, scarcity of resources etc. which highly influence country's economy.
Tourism Demand and Trends
As per Smith and Puczkó (2014) point of view, Kenya is a highly visited country which
has rich past and historical backgrounds, building, monuments and environmental views. It
attract the visitors to a great extent. In respect to this, luxurious hotels and unique
accommodation facilities also influence the visitors. In their tourism market, there will be high
trend of luxurious hotels which have independent organisational structure. Furthermore, traveller
highly want to go such place which provides them comfort and hygienic place. According to
Ngoka (2014) Kenyan ecotourism mainly focus on those hotels which provides other facility
such as health and spa. It is a place which is mostly visited by people for their business meetings
and events. It can be said based on the above reasons that visitors highly attract to luxurious
lifestyle which offers complete rest and other accommodation facilities as well. As per Mowforth
and Munt (2015) point of view, market trends and demand of customers make negative impact
on tourism sector. Development of large number of luxurious hotels such as Repute hotels group
create a competitive situation to other small size hotels. It is also difficult to expand the hotels in
a small location, because while opening a large enterprise it takes a long time and heavy
expenditures which is another disadvantage of the Repute Hotels group.
Issues faced by hotels
While expanding London Repute hotels into Kenyan Ecotourism market, there are
various kinds of factors which affects its performance. As per Moswete and Thapa (2015) point
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of view, Kenya is a tourist destination place which provides Eco-friendly environment to their
visitors. There are various kinds of factors which highly affects while expanding the Repute
hotels into Kenyan ecotourism market. There are some political factors such as stability of UK
economy, economic factors represents the stable governmental conditions which highly affects
the performance of the country. Furthermore, social trends such as customer behaviour and their
spending which is highly influenced with luxury hotels and technological factors which includes
using expert knowledge of software make great impact on ecotourism planned growth.
Furthermore, environmental factors will also analysed by the London Repute Hotel group which
includes those techniques by which water and energy can be conserved in the Kenya economy.
As per Horner and Swarbrooke (2016) point of view, cross cultural is the key issue which
can be focused by the cited hotel.It includes using appropriate HR and customer services make
positive as well as negative impact on the growth of the cited hotel. It includes those actions and
activity by which Repute Hotel Group can deal with their customers and employees which have
diversified nature, culture and religion by satisfying their needs and demand. It can be said that
all the political, social, technological, legal, environmental and cross-cultural issues make
positive impact for dealing the Repute hotels in a diversified culture. According to Kovilage and
Gnanapala (2016), these factors also make negative impact in their financial performance. Due to
changes in legal rules and regulations by the Kenya's government or changes in consumer's taste
and preferences will also make negative impact while expanding the business into a new market.
Cross-cultural issues refers to dealing with diversified people make diverse impact. For example,
If Repute Hotel does not full-fill the need of employees and provide poor wage, then it will
automatically make negative impact while expanding the business into new tourism market.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
It is a most important part for making a research proposal which includes different kinds
of tools, approaches, philosophiesby which objectives or purpose can be accomplished by the
researcher (Das and Chatterjee, 2015). Different methods and designs of making research are as
follows:
Research philosophy
There are generally two types of philosophy can be used while performing a research
such as positivism and interpretvitism. In which positivism is used to estimate the quantitative
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investigation which is done by limited resource or facts. On the other hand, interpretvitism
philosophy mainly based on the assumptions, values and beliefs in which single information
contains multiple facts in it. While analysing the expansion of Repute hotels group,
interpretvitism philosophy will be used for collecting valid information as per the assumptions
made for selected respondents.
Research Approach
There are two approach such as inductive and deductive which can be used for
determining pattern of collecting the information related to the study (Das and Chatterjee, 2015).
While using inductive approach, all the information in required to be general to specific manner.
On the other hand, deductive approach is opposite to the inductive. The current study adopt
inductive approach while analysing the various factors such as political, economical, social,
environmental and cross-cultural issues which are faced by the Repute Hotels group in Kenya
ecotourism market.
Types of research investigation
There different types of research design that can be used while making an appropriate
investigation. It can be two type like qualitative and quantitative. Use of both the research design
are totally based on the nature of study (Canavan, 2015). Mostly qualitative type is applied but
while expanding the hotel both method will be used. Qualitative method will help to analysis the
Kenya's market trend whereas quantitative method can be used to analysis the number of
customers and competitors estimation.
Data Collection
For collecting the data, primary and secondary both methods can be used. Primary
collection includes those techniques by which data can be collected through interviews,
observation, group focused etc. On the other hand, while collecting the secondary data,
magazines, books, articles and journals can be used by the researchers. In the present study, to
make a research proposal, both the methods will be used for collecting information. In this study,
researcher will organize a survey through questionnaire in order to estimate the favourable and
unfavourable condition while expanding the hotel into new market group. By using secondary
data, researcher analyse books, articles and journals etc., in order to analysie and compare past
condition of the country.
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Sampling
For collecting and analysing the data, suitable sampling style will be used by the
researcher (Bhattacharya and Guin, 2017). The present study mentioned the uses of both
probability and non-probability sampling style. Researcher also select the sample size 50 while
determining the impact of expansion of hotel into new market.
Data Analysis
For making a research proposal, researcher will analyse the data in order to identify the
impact of expansion of Repute Hotels group into Kenya ecotourism market. In the present study,
thematic test technique will be adopted by the researcher by which he can analyse the qualitative
facts and its impact. Thus, by preparing suitable themes, impact of expansion and trends in
Kenya market can be analysed by the scholars.
Timeline
The time line shows the current project's condition and its preparation process (Angalia,
2017). Under this first step, research aim and objective are determined in one week and then next
two week other process were implemented for completing the research proposal. Below table
shows the working of overall research completed in 13 weeks are as follows:
Activity/ week 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Selecting research aim and objectives
Drafting proposal of research
Propositioning constitution of research
project
Writing of literature review
Choice of research methods
Processing questionnaire & assembling
primary data
Examining data
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Closing of remaining chapters
Submission
CONCLUSION
As per the above detailed report, it can be analysed that tourist industry plays an
important role for the development of a country's economy. The present report discovered the
research proposal which analyse the impact on expanding London's Repute Hotels into Kenya
ecotourism market. Further, it also discovered the key issues such as political, legal,
environmental, cross-cultural etc. which make positive and negative impact on their financial
performance. At last, it also explained the various research methodology such as philosophy,
approaches, styles etc. which is suitable for the cited hotel. Survey conducted through
questionnaire also explained in the report.
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REFERENCES
Journals and Books
Angalia, J. F., 2017. MEDIA MESSAGES AND STRATEGIES: SELLING KENYA TO THE
WORLD THROUGH THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY. American Journal of
Communication. 1(1). pp.44-65.
Bhattacharya, S. and Guin, K. K., 2017. Segmentation and Classification of Indian Domestic
Tourists: A Tourism Stakeholder Perspective. Journal of Management and Training for
Industries. 4(1). p.1.
Canavan, B., 2015. The Tourist Culture Nexus: Occurrence, Advantages, Sustainability.
Das, M. and Chatterjee, B., 2015. Ecotourism: A panacea or a predicament?. Tourism
Management Perspectives. 14. pp.3-16.
Das, M. and Chatterjee, B., 2015. Tourism Management Perspectives. Tourism Management, 14,
pp.3-16.
Horner, S. and Swarbrooke, J., 2016. Consumer behaviour in tourism. Routledge.
Kovilage, M. P. and Gnanapala, A. C., 2016. Intention of foreign tourists to stay in eco-certified
accommodation: With special reference to Sri Lanka. Tourism, Leisure and Global
Change, 3, pp.74-89.
Moswete, N. and Thapa, B., 2015. Factors that influence support for community-based
ecotourism in the rural communities adjacent to the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park,
Botswana. Journal of Ecotourism. 14(2-3). pp.243-263.
Mowforth, M. and Munt, I., 2015. Tourism and sustainability: Development, globalisation and
new tourism in the third world. Routledge.
Ngoka, P. C., 2014. Tourism Visitation of Yankari and Cross River National Parks by Local and
Foreign Statuses-Implications for Development of International Tourism in Nigeria. US-
China L. Rev. 11. p.763.
Smith, M. and Puczkó, L., 2014. Health, tourism and hospitality: Spas, wellness and medical
travel. Routledge.
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van Hoof, L. and Steins, N. A., 2017. Mission report Kenya: scoping Mission Marine Fisheries
Kenya (No. C038/17). Wageningen Marine Research.
Online
The Top Three Challenges Facing hotels. 2016. [Online]. Available through:
<http://www.sanderson.com/blog/multi-channel/bid/276963/The-Top-Three-Challenges-
Facing-Retailers>. [Accessed on 1st September 2017].
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APPENDIX
Questionnaire
(Kindly take few minutes to provide your responses. Your feedback is appreciated)
Demographic information
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Male □
Female □
Q1: Does Repute Hotels group operate its business in a strict process?
a) Yes
b) No
Q2: What changes will owner have to make to Repute Hotel group to successfully
expand into a new market?
a) Advertisement
b) Public Relation
c) Market analysis
d) Determining right pricing strategies
e) Competitor analysis
Q3: What factors that highly affects the hotel before expanding it into Kenyan market?
a) Staffing
b) Budgets
c) Operations
d) Resources
Q4: What issues that Repute Hotel group faced while expanding into new market?
a) Political issue
b) Cross-cultural
c) Environmental
d) Economical
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Q5: Is Kenya's market trend is beneficial for the cited hotel?
a) Yes
b) No
Q6: What kinds of demand that customers want to the hotel?
a) Luxury facility
b) Accommodation services
c) Health facility
d) Other
Q7: Have Hotel completely researched my new customers?
a) Yes
b) No
Q8: Are Competitor's position is favourable for the Repute Hotels Group?
a) Yes
b) No
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