Ethiopia and Tourism I

Recently, I read “Ethiopia has been named one of the 12 top destinations for 2007 by Frommer's Travel Guide” How wonderful! The report also added: “Ethiopia joins U.S. destinations Minneapolis, Glen Canyon UT, Ashville NC, Portland OR, Portland Maine, as well as hot travel spots around the world including Krakow, Okanaga Valley BC, Panama, Tokyo, Zurich and Virgin Gorda in British Virgin Islands.”

I was not surprised by this because I knew of a Los Angels area independent survey by a travel agency advocacy group conducted in 2000, which found 60% of respondents had named Ethiopia as one of the places they would like to visit. The question then is: What is the Ethiopian Ministry of Tourism doing to prepare for such a ground swell of good will from European and American tourists towards Ethiopia? From what I saw on my last visit some four years ago, the tourist sites leave much to be desired, and need a lot of work in preparation to meet the coming challenge.

Many countries in Europe, America, Asia and Africa draw a great deal of their revenues from tourism. In some countries this can be as high as 50 – 60% of GDP, and is a major source of foreign currency exchange. It is not just the hotels and airline ticket sales that are the beneficiaries, but many secondary and tertiary benefits accrue from tourism. Starting from the taxi service and local transportation to food and drinks dispensing restaurants and bars, as well as every service providing agency, down to the shoeshine boys, called lystiro, all can extract benefits if properly trained and organized.

When one visits tourist sites here in the US or Europe, one is bombarded by various stores just outside the facility, selling gimmicks of what visitors saw and experienced inside. The saying goes: “Strike while the iron is hot”. This then needs to be done while the effect of the visit is fresh in memory. For example, Disneyland has Mickey Mouse toys, candies, chocolates, watches, bracelets, necklaces, hats, sunglasses, shoes, ties, shirts, banners… etc., all with that single motif of that big eared mouse, and this is only a partial list. The same needs to be done for every tourist site on the local level in Ethiopia.

Is developing tourism the job of the government and/or the Ministry of Tourism? It can be, but it does not need to.  The government should leave this to the private sector, but the government has a very important role to play. What is the role of government here? There are many important things the government can, and should do, to develop tourism. We will explore that in our next article it this series.                          

                                                                                                More coming…

G. E. Gorfu