The Relationship between Internet-based Advertisements Customer Retention in Conventional and Budget Hotels in Uasin Gishu, Kenya

In Kenya, advertisement is a multi-billion shilling industry. Increasingly, Internet-based advertising media are overtaking many of the traditional media such as television, radio and newspaper because of the rapid shift toward consumer's usage of the Internet. No studies have been conducted to show the extent of adoption of internet-based advertising mediums and their effect on the different aspects of businesses in Kenya. Thus, this study aims to determine the extent of adoption of Internet based advertising in the conventional and budget hotels in Kenya how it affects the customer retention. The study was done in Eldoret town in Uasin Gishu County. 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 Pearson linear regression with the aid of SPSS. The results showed that Internet-based advertisements had positive relationship with customer retention but not significantly correlated (r=0.788, p=0.019, pgreater than0.01). This reveals that internet-based advertisements had positive relationship with customer retention. 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 internet-based advertisement modes in order to increase customer retention and thus increase revenues.