Contribution of motorcycle transport services utilization on urban tourism product performance in busia county, western kenya tourism circuit

Abstract

Motorcycle transport services provide affordable and convenient means of public transport within the urban environments. Alongside public transportation motorcycle was used in tourism transport for short day trips or to nearby tourist attractions. However, the roles of motorcycles transport service utilization in enhancing urban tourism products had not been done in exhaustion by previous studies. Therefore, the study focused on determining the contribution of motorcycle transport service utilization on urban tourism‘s destination access, product innovativeness and urban product consumption within the two Busia County‘s urban centers that is Malaba and Busia towns. Majority of destination sites had record on motor vehicle transport and less or not reports on motorcycle use on leisure activities. Motorcycle transport services have not been realized and accommodated formally within the transport sector and their services are totally not reported within the tourism sector. Therefore, the study sought to examine the outcome of using motorcycle transport services in enhancing urban tourism product performance if substituted or integrated with other conventional tourism means. The study objectives were; to determine the contribution of motorcycle transport service utilization on urban tourism destination accessibility; to investigate the contribution of motorcycle transport service utilization on urban tourism product and to examine the contribution of motorcycle transport service utilization on urban tourism product consumption. The null hypotheses were that these objectives have no significant contribution of motorcycle transport service utilization on urban destination access, product innovation and product consumption. The research focused on the outcome of integrating and legalizing the motorcycle transport use within urban destinations. The study was anchored on graph theorytravelling salesman problem, KANO model and utility theories. The study used retrospective cohort research design adapting embedded research approach which guided data collection from two urban centers at the same time about visitors‘ motorcycle utilization preferences within Busia County, Western Kenya Tourism Circuit. The population of the study was 20000 tourists, and from which of 392 respondents were sampled. Quota sampling was used to obtain information from different study units. This comprised of tourists visiting the Busia urban center and Malaba urban center area. Data was collected using structured questionnaires between May and August, coded using SPSS-Version 20. Demographic features were analyzed using descriptive statistics, while regression analysis was used to analyze motorcycle transport service utilization, categorical regression used to analyze destination access, product innovation and product consumption. The results indicated that majority of the respondents preferred to use motorcycles transport services (p≤0.001), promoting destination access was important (p≤0.001), enhancing product innovativeness was imperative (p≤0.001) and contribution to product consumption was essential (p≤0.001). The null hypotheses for these variables were rejected. The findings clearly demonstrated the collective role motorcycle transport services have in promoting urban tourism product destination access, urban product innovation and urban tourism product consumption.