Stakeholder Attitudes Towards Tourism Training In Middle Level Colleges In Kenya

Training is critical to human resource development and in the promotion and development of the tourism industry. In Kenya, Middle Level Colleges (MLCs) have been instrumental in manpower training for the tourism sector and national development. Despite this, no comprehensive study has been undertaken to assess the performance of MLC trainees in tourism training under the changing global tourism environment to realize Kenya’s Vision 2030. As such, this study assessed attitudes of key tourism stakeholders towards tourism training in MLCs and their contributions to human capital for the tourism industry in Kenya. Objectives of the study were to assess the types of programmes and management of tourism training offered by MLCs, the attitudes of trainees and trainers towards tourism training in MLCs. The study utilized the descriptive research design and targeted college administrators, tourism trainees and trainers. Twenty (20) MLCs were randomly sampled for this study from Nairobi County. College administrators from 16 MLCs were interviewed to get details on student enrolment in each college, number of staff, and infrastructure and equipment. A sample of 326 trainees out of 4,110 in public and 1,429 from private MLCs were selected using Krejcie and Morgan Table (1970) for the administration of questionnaires. These were composed of 172 trainees from public and 154 from private MLCs. 105 trainers comprising of 45 from public MLCs and 60 from private MLCs were purposively selected. These gave an overall sample of 447 interviewed who participated in the study. Data was collected using questionnaires and interviews, and analyzed using descriptive statistics to generate means, percentages and frequency, while inferential statistics including ANOVA and Chi-square test were used to do further analysis on selected variables. Findings revealed that there were significant differences in the types of programmes and management of tourism trainings offered by MLCs based on college administrators’ attitudes (χ2=8.878, df=15, p