A study of factors that motivate school groups to visit Murchison Falls National Park and the experiences gained during the trip
Abstract
This report was based on topic the study of factor that motivate school groups to visit Murchison Falls National Park (MFNP) and the experiences gained during the trip. The objectives of the study are to profile school groups visiting MFNP, determine the travel motives of school groups and establish the challenges faced by them in visiting MFNP. Data was collected using questionnaires, interviews and documentary surveys and descriptively analysed using both
quantitative and qualitative techniques with the help of SPSS software ware version 16.
The study revealed that school going groups differ in profiles based on age, category of schools, and origin purpose of visit, organizers and period of visits. The school group‘s visitation to MFNP is influenced by variety of wildlife, study purpose, friends and relatives, love and passion and others. Although the influencing factors exist, they face challenges of limited information, poor accommodation, long distance, hot climate, poor roads, language barrier and scarce equipments. Based on these challenges, the study recommends that the Ministry should set up strategies of promoting tourism in schools and having affordable study tours in the protected area. The management of MFNP need to equip their staff with park information that is packaged differently to suit different categories of visitors. The study also recommends that teachers need to be taken on familiarization trips to protected areas to be able to adequately feed the school groups with the right information and charge appropriate costs to the study tour.