The Relationship between Traditional Advertisement and Customer Retention in Conventional and Budget Hotels in Uasin Gishu, Kenya

The increase of a new product's sales could be attributed to consumers being informed about the existence of the product hence advertising can accelerate the consumer awareness process. However, research on the relationship between advertisements on customer retention lacks in many areas including the hospitality sector. The objectives of the study were to determine the relationship between traditional advertisement and customer retention in conventional and budget hotels in Uasin Gishu County, Kenya. The study adopted descriptive research design. The target population comprised 20 convectional and budget hotels. Simple random sampling was used to select 10 establishments while systematic random sampling was used to select the 210 customers who participated in the study. Purposive sampling was used to select the 10 management staff. Data was collected using questionnaires. Data collected was analysed using descriptive statistics and linear regression with the aid of SPSS. From the correlation results, the use of traditional advertisements was found to be weakly correlated to customer retention (r=0.130, p=0.063). Based on these results, the study concluded that customer retention cannot be fully achieved through traditional. Consequently, the study recommends that hotel managers should make an effort to change from traditional advertisement modes to new age advertisement modes such as the internet.