Role of online training on service delivery of waiters in licensed hotels in Nairobi County.

Abstract

There are challenges facing waiters in the hotel industry which require training for them to get skills for service delivery. During the COVID-19 pandemic period, people were not allowed to have physical contact with one another and waiters were no exception. People started working at home, and these called for online training needs for various organizations including the hotel industry. There is limited literature about the online training done purposely for waiters justifying the area to be explored through research. The study focused on online training and service delivery to Waiters. Consequently, it purposes to model the Role of online training on Service Delivery of Waiters in licensed hotels in Nairobi City County. The specific objective was to establish a model of online training and service delivery of waiters in licensed hotels in Nairobi County during Covid 19 seasons. Subsequently, the research method was a convergent parallel design which entails that the researcher concurrently conducts the quantitative and qualitative approach of research methodology. There were 71 hotels targeted with a target population of 1300 waiters’, and 260 supervisors which were 20 % of the population of the study but the response was (N=242) out of the expected 260. The data was collected by sending online questionnaires (Using Google Forms). IBM SPSS software version 21 was used to clean, present and analyze data. The variables were modeled using a regression model to establish the relationship between the variables. The results showed that there was a positive contribution of technical skills (B= 0.541) and interpersonal skills (B= 0.032) acquired during online training to the service delivery of the waiters. However, there was a negative relationship between conceptual skills (B= -.206) and service delivery. The study outcomes conclude that technical skills and interpersonal skills were required at the operation level than conceptual skills in enhancing service delivery. Therefore, the training department should only focus on the delivery of technical and interpersonal skills when conducting online training.