Linguistic Communication Challenges Encountered by Tourists Visiting Musanze District

Research Paper (undergraduate) from the year 2014 in the subject African Studies - Linguistics, grade: 16, INES Ruhengeri Institute of Applied Science (INSTITUTE OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS), course: Languages and applied linguistics, language: English, abstract: At the end of his languages and applied linguistics studies, the researcher decides to carry out the research about Linguistic communication challenges encountered by tourist visiting Musanze District under the case study of VNP Area, with the aim of making an assessment of linguistic skills and the level of customers¿ satisfaction in Tourism and hospitality industry.
This goal was achieved under the following objectives:
To identify linguistic communication challenges encountered by tourists when they are being offered Tourism and hospitality services,
To identify the effects of linguistic communication challenges on Tourism and hospitality,
To suggest promising solutions to address linguistic communication challenges identified in Tourism and hospitality.
As far as hypotheses are concerned the researcher assumed firstly that since Rwanda, a multilingual country with a single and common mother tongue, Tourists are likely to encounter linguistic communication challenges. Secondly, unsatisfied tourists classify Rwanda as a tourists¿ nonattractive area and thirdly, training by competent language professionals is one of the strategies to address language problem.
The population of this research is a set of 165 Tourists who were purposively selected from the area of the study and 58 service providers who by quota sampling were segmented into 28VNP tourists guides,15 tours guides/drivers,5 community guides, and 10 hotel ,bar restaurant as staff who necessarily interact with tourists.
According to the findings, 86 tourists (52%) tourists experienced language challenges related to:
the lack of knowledge of international languages, cultural identification by 99 tourists or 60% while nature interpretations related problems were questioned by 66 tourists or 40%. This has negative impact on 91 tourists or 55% to pay unjustified bills, 41 or 25% who lose properties and 33 tourists or 20% experience financial loss; it also inconvenience staff through losing job as said by 20 service providers or (50%), the lack of promotion as said by 15 (30%) and the lack of motivation as it was said by 10 or (20%).
Finally, 111 tourists (67%) suggest training by language specialists while 54 tourists (33%) suggest intensive interaction with native speakers to address language related problem. Briefly, this research brought victims of language communication challenges altogether on a round table so as to promote language communication improvement for customers satisfaction.