TOURIST SATISFACTION AND THE EFFECTIVENESS OF TOUR GUIDES: A STUDY IN KENYA'S NORTH RIFT REGION.

Kenya’s tour guides play an important role in presenting the country’s rich tourist products and services. Tour guides roles and performance are important and significant in the Kenyan tour industry as they are the face of the industry. The study explored the broad issues of tour guides performance attributes and tourist satisfaction in North Rift tourist region of Kenya. The study hypothesized that tour guide performance attributes have significant effects on tourist satisfaction and the study used cross sectional research design and applied Performance Evaluation Measurement Analysis (PEMA) to evaluate tour guide performance in the North Rift tour circuit region from both domestic and foreign tourists. Descriptive statistics and Pearson correlation was used in data analysis. From the data collected and analyzed in the circuit’s three regions of Lake Nakuru, lakes Baringo & Bogoria and Kitale. The Pearson correlation (r) analysis results indicate that the tour guides were ill equipped in equipment & tools of trade (-0.1492), poor personality traits (-0.0049), inability to customize tourist service (0.0084), stimulation of tourist interests (0.0419) and weak in problem solving (0.0184). But overally, the findings indicate that the tour guide performance attributes contribute 78.14% in tourist satisfaction. Therefore, the study recommends that the tour guides should acquire equipment & guiding tools of trade, improve on their personality traits, inculcate the skill of houmour to stimulate tourist interests and enhance their problem solving techniques in order to realize tourist satisfaction.