Shaileen Shah, General Manager of Trademark Hotel, talks about the concept of staycation, allowing guests to enjoy a unique holiday experience in Nairobi.

"We believe in something called a blue ocean strategy. Over the last few years, we have been concentrating on the diplomatic clientele. A lot of the diplomatic district is around us and that has primarily been our focus. We then made a bullish attempt to go out and look for corporate clients. The obvious issues we have are the roads, the time it takes to get from one place to another. Trying to attract certain corporates to come out this way has been difficult; however, there are options, there are ways to lure them in a different way. Again, creating these unique experiences where people can come out, have other things to do if they are here for a full week, there are a lot of options we can look at. But we have decided to go beyond that as well into a market we have not really worked on which is the leisure market. We now have a very unique placement with the whole recreation element. We find that in the month of December when everybody runs away to Mombasa to get to the beach, we forget about the people who actually live in Mombasa who are probably running away from the beach and trying to go somewhere else. There is the middle to lower-class people who cannot afford a plane ticket to get away with their entire family and go on a holiday out of the country. So, how do we create that holiday experience here in Nairobi? There are neighboring cities like Kisumu and Eldoret that have the people who would like to travel into Nairobi, whether it is just for a weekend or a whole week with their kids. There is a certain vibe to that. So, we created something called a staycation. The family can take a flight in and we pick them up from the airport. They get to spend time with their kids while we host them. The children can enjoy the recreational facilities at the mall while the parents can enjoy a spa treatment or a nice dinner together. And there, you have a great weekend. You have made a little holiday out of it. We tried that approach hoping to get a good mix of the business as well as the leisure clientele. We find that a lot of people go home for the holidays in July and August, and this is the time we would capitalize on that leisure clientele as this is the time that people are coming to watch the migration in the Mara. With all our facilities and outlets why wouldn’t they stop over at Tribe or Trademark?", says Shaileen Shah.

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