An Analysis of the Tourism Marketing Performance and Strategy of Ethiopia.

Abstract

Tourism is one of the fast-growing industries in the world and has been considered as the main driver of world trade and prosperity. According to the UNWTO (2016), it contributes 10% of global GDP (US$ 7 trillion), 5% of world exports (US$1.5 trillion) and one in 11 jobs worldwide. Ethiopia, the origin of humankind and the only un-colonized country in the continent of Africa, tops the list in the region having 12 UNESCO inscribed world heritage sites. However, the performance of the tourism sector in the country is very poor, and in terms of travel and tourism competitiveness, Ethiopia is ranked 118th out of 141 countries in 2015 (WB, 2012; MoCT, 2015 & WEF, 2015). Cognizant of several reasons for this imbalance, the premise of this research was focused on a pre-assumption that either the tourism marketing strategy has been inappropriately formulated and implemented or even overlooked. A descriptive study was conducted to evaluate the performance of the tourism marketing practices of the government of Ethiopia. The tourism marketing strategy for Ethiopia (2016-2020) was critically reviewed and both strengths and weaknesses of the strategic document were identified. The study has revealed that the performance of tourism marketing practice is low (below regional average in most indicators), although the country has a good market growth rate. Notwithstanding a few pitfalls, the analysis showed that the existing tourism marketing strategy of the country was successfully formulated. It has been suggested that the government can concentrate more on the materialization of weak positions and modify the existing strategic documents accordingly so that the tourism marketing performance can improve.

Keywords

• Tourism
• Tourism Marketing Strategy
• Key performance indicators
• Ethiopia