dc.description.abstract |
Strategic human resource management is an essential determinant of the tourism
product quality in tourism businesses and destinations. Although there have been
efforts by both the public and private sector to promote the development of domestic
tourism in various parts of the world, the tourism product quality has been relatively
low compared to the changing customer needs, wants, and preferences. This has been
greatly attributed to lack of clear human policies by most tourism organizations,
which exposes them to challenges in recruiting, developing and maintaing a
committed, competent, well-managed and well-motivated workforce ( Luiz, 2000).
This has led to frequent complaints from the guests as well as the employees in the
tourism businesses, particularly in the hotels. This study sought to establish the effect
of recruitment and selection, employee training and development, employee
motivation and remuneration on tourism product quality. This research study was
carried out using explanatory research design. It targeted a total of 209 hotels and
sampled 138 hotels. The study used simple random sampling technique to select the
sampled hotels. Data was collected from hotel managers of the sampled hotels with a
closed-ended questionnaire. Data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential
statistics. Frequency distribution was used as descriptive statistics for all variables
because they were categorical variables. Multiple regression analysis was used as
inferential statistics to establish effect of recruitment and selection, employee training
and development, employee motivation and remuneration on tourism product quality.
The findings showed that strategic human resource management was given low
consideration by tourism industry, unlike other industries, though tourism product
quality was was reported to be high. The four components of strategic human resource
management under investigation were rated low by the hotel managers. The findings
further showed that recruitment and selection (p=0.152), training and development
(p=0.741), and employee remuneration (p=0.068) had no significant effects on
tourism product quality. Only employee motivation (p=0.004) had significant effect
on tourism product quality. This shows that tourism industry puts more emphasis on
employee motivation as the main determinant of product quality. The study findings
have shown that strategic human resource management has not been fully adopted by
the tourism industry. The study therefore recommends: The National and County
Governments to formulate policies that direct full adoption of Strategic Human
Resource Management in the tourism indusry and to organize regular county
sensitization forums for the purpose of sharing with tourism stakeholders.
Management of hotels should allocate adequate resources to employee motivation,
recruitment and selection, training and development, and employee renumeration |
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