Nature of Employment and Its Effect on the Quality of Life of Employees in SMTEs in Mombasa County, Kenya

Tourism is an important economic sector globally contributing to economic development of many countries. Though the tourism sector has been credited with the creation of millions of jobs to populations’ worldwide, there has been wide-ranging apprehension on its capacity to improve the populaces’ quality of life. This study therefore sought to establish whether the nature of jobs created had an influence on quality of life of employees working in the STMES found in Mombasa County, Kenya. A mixed methods research design using the embedded approach was adopted. Primary data was collected using researcher administered semi-structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. The target population was the 1,572 employees in the SMTEs. Probability Proportional to Size Sampling was used for the SMTEs employees where a total of 464 employees formed the sample size while purposive sampling was used for interview respondents. Linear regression was used to analyse quantitative data while tables were used for data presentation. The nature of employment had a statically significant effect on employees’ quality of life (R = 0.881; P = 0.000; V = 0.804). This finding has implications for developing a regulatory framework that would enable SMTEs to create productive employment in that, it is a wake-up call to the government to re-look at the implementation of the economic blue print (Vision 2030) and identify functional implementation strategies it can use to ensure its overall goal of providing a high quality of life for citizens is achieved.

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