Measuring tourist satisfaction with Kenya's wildlife safari: a case study of Tsavo West National Park

Kenya's national parks form the pillar of the country's tourism industry. Over one million international tourists visit Kenya annually to partake in wildlife safari and other forms of nature-based tourism. However in recent years, the country's tourism industry has shown increasing signs of poor performance, especially in the volume of international tourists visiting the national parks. A number of reasons have been postulated as possible causes of this poor performance. They include the presumed degradation and reduction of the quality of the wildlife parks' tourist product, a deteriorating security situation in the country and poor infrastructure. However, most of these suggestions are not based on empirical research. This study investigates one of these arguments (i.e. the reduction of the quality of the parks' tourist product as it relates to visitor satisfaction) using the case study of Tsavo West National Park. The SERVQUAL service quality attributes were used to measure the quality of services, and the overall visitor satisfaction with tourist product and services of the park. A total of 200 international tourists were interviewed and interestingly, an overwhelming majority of the tourists (over 70%) indicated that they had a satisfactory experience. Thus, based on the tourists' responses, one may argue that at least for the case of Tsavo West, the park offers a quality tourist product. In this regard, the study contends that probably there exist exogenous factors that are responsible for the current decline and poor performance of Kenya tourism industry a reduction of the quality of the parks' tourist product is not a determinant Of Such decline. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.