Predictors of Length of Stay in the Tourism Industry in Kenya
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Date
2015-12
Authors
Magu, Judy Waithira
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Kenyatta University
Abstract
When tourists plan a holiday, a number of decisions must be made about different components
of the trip like the choice of the destination, the type of the accommodation and means of
transport. One of the most important holiday characteristics to be decided is the length of stay.
This variable has received little attention in literature, bearing in mind its effect on the income
generated in tourist destination. Tourists who stay at their destination longer, visit more
attractions and generate-more business for the destination than those who stay for shorter time
ceteris peribus. Kenya's long term development blue print; Kenya Vision 2030,has identified
tourism as one of the six sectors that will drive the economic growth to a double digit by the
year 2030 leading the country to be globally competitive. Despite this fact, the tourism industry
has been coupled by various challenges including travel advisory from the leading tourist
market. Given the importance for destinations to have long stay tourism, it is necessary to
undertake an in-depth analysis of this variable in order to identify exactly which factors affect
the length of stay. This will provide the necessary tools to allow the relevant bodies involved in
destination planning and management to attract tourists who can prolong their stay. The
purpose of this study was to identify those variables that influence tourists' length of stay at the
destination so as to increase the revenue collected from tourism to achieve the intended goal of
contributing to economic growth. Uncovering the determinants of length of stay is critical to
the design of marketing policies that promote longer stays, associated with higher occupancy
rates and revenue streams. Also the models of length of stay are important to the research on
sustainable tourism since they are useful in forecasting tourists' on site time and the stress on
local resources caused by tourism activity. This study estimated the demand of length of stay in
the tourism industry in Kenya using Generalised least square (GLS) estimation technique for
data covering for the period 1980 to 2013. The results suggest that tourist's incomes (Yit),
holiday visitors (Hvist.), price of accommodation (Paccj) are important factors determining the
length of stay in the tourism industry in Kenya. Tourist's income and holiday visitors have
positive relationship with length of stay while price of accommodation, and terrorism in Kenya
have a negative relationship. The results confirm the expected signs of positive relationship
between length of stay and tourist's income, holiday visitors as well as negative relationship
between the length of stay price of accommodation and terrorism in the tourism industry in
Kenya.
Description
A Research Project Submitted to the Department of Economic Theory, School of Economics in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of Master of Economics (Policy and Management) of Kenyatta University