Kambaga, DunstanMongare, OmareMuriuki, Lawrence2023-01-132023-01-132023-01-13http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/1836Tourism is recognized as one of the key sectors of development in all countries and a major source of income jobs and wealth creation (Mossberg, 2007). Tourism included activities where people travel to and stay in locations outside their usual surrounding for a period of not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business or other purposes (WTO, 2012). Choices made by tourists are changeable due to the economic conditions in their countries of origin and perception of status associated with destination (Williams & Hall, 2000). Tourism industry players have adopted the use of marketing strategies as a remedy to inter country competition for foreign customers whereby advertisement targeting Domestic tourist is the order of the day (Baum, 2006). The Tourism Act of 2011 in Kenya, prescribes the marketing and promotion of niche tourism services and products, when appropriately implemented will boost Domestic tourism performance. Marketing communication channels that are commonly used in the tourism industry are advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, direct marketing, public relations and trade shows (Kotler, 2009). Consumer behavior plays a key role for all marketing activities which have the main use of promoting and selling tourism products by involving certain decisions, activities, ideas or experiences that satisfy the consumer needs and wants (Solomon, 2006). The tourism consumer buying behaviors is the combination of acts, attitudes and decisions concerned with choosing, buying and consuming any of the tourism products, services and its post consuming reactions (Christopher, 2004). The consumer knows and identifies a certain brand by the image that exists in his or her mind. In the United Kingdom, Gilbert (2002), uncovered that it is important to uncover the characteristics of tourism as a product since they have an implication for the nature of consumer behavior. Mihai (2010), analyzed consumer buying behavior in Africa and determined that the consumption of tourism products depends on discretionary time and income. Consumers are influenced in their decision making processes by many internal and external motivators and determinants when they choose products. They may be affected in different ways, according to the type of product or service that they are purchasing (Horner, 2007).The Consumer Behaviors is a combination of acts, attitudes and decisions made concerning the buying and consuming of the tourism products and services offered to tourists in destination areas and its post- buying reactions. Consumer behavior plays a key role in marketing activities of tourist products especially in promoting and selling tourism products and services in tourist destinations. The purpose of this research study is to establish factors affecting consumer behavior among Domestic tourists in travel agents in Nairobi, Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were to determine the extent to which price, product and safety affects consumer behavior among Domestic tourists in travelling agents. The research adopted descriptive design. The target population was 306 (KATA,2019) employees involved in travelling agents and sample size of 75 employees were selected using Fisher, Laing & Stoeckel (1983) formula. The study used both systematic techniques and stratification methods from each stratum in sampling employees. Convenient method was used to select 35 travel agents out of 114 (KATA, 2019) in Nairobi (Appendix II). The study used both primary and secondary data which was collected by use of questionnaire survey. The analyzing of qualitative data was done by use of the format in the thematic content analysis, while, quantitative data was done by use of descriptive and inferential statistics through the use of statistical packages for social sciences (SPSS), Chi-square (χ2 ), ANOVA and descriptive tests were performed. The data were presented by use of graphs, pie charts and table. Employees were asked to respond to a set of statements on the Likert scale where 5=strongly agreed, 4= agreed 3= neutral, 2= disagree, 1= strongly disagree and they had enough knowledge about travel agents in order to understand and respond to the questions. Descriptive analysis was used to summarize data regarding product, price and safety and Consumer Behavior in tourism destination. It’s evident that majority of the respondents strongly agreed that product, price and safety influence a tourist in decision-making to consume a product. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the existence and nature of relationship between Product, Pricing, Safety and consumer behavior among Domestic tourists. The study concludes that tourist behaviors is strongly influenced by price with 41.4% change followed by product and safety respectively as indicated by a Pearson correlation coefficient of .653**,.611** and .633** These relationships were found to be statistically significant as the significant value was 0.000 which is less than 0.05 threshold. Since, price, product and safety affects tourists, further research for Safety should be carried on to ascertain the individual safety of tourists in destination areas, especially this era of Al-Shabaab which is a security challenge to Kenya and the horn of East Africa as a whole. The study will benefit travel agents and tourism industry as a whole since the sector continues to be one of the largest industries in the world. Also, further research with wider scope to be carried on as this study could not exhaust all the factors affecting consumer behavior among Domestic tourists.enConsumer behavior; Price; Product; Safety; Tourists.Article