Tuesday January 6, 2004

We should devise innovative strategies to tap
Ethiopian Tourism Industry
 

By Belay Chebssi
Samaritan@telecom.net.et
 

“Ethiopia has 140 million potential customers. Hello! Wake up!”

Two years after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C, East African regions namely Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda were devastated by pessimistic travel advisories. In the past two years travel warnings have been scaring away tourist from east Africa in general. Today these countries are still trying their best by launching new campaigns to regain their earnings from the tourism industry.

Tourism is the world’s number one employer and foreign currency earner. For instance, last year tourism in neighboring Uganda earned 130 million USD compared to the 80 million the country earned from the export coffee. Uganda earned this amount in spite of the travel bans issued by Britain and the United States. The country targeted specialized tourism interests such as bird watching, gorilla watching, sport fishing, white water rafting, and nature walks.

Ethiopia just like Uganda can earn more from tourism than coffee, if we just start thinking harder and be systematic. Our untapped business opportunities in the tourism industry include the following:

®   Historical sights in the north.

®  ·Natural beauties in the south (Eco    Tourism)

®  The presence of international organizations and conference centers like ECA, OAU and AU centers (Conference  Tourism)

®  The luxury collections: Sheraton Hotel and Hilton Addis.

®  The Ethiopian Airlines’ direct flight to Europe, South East Asia, China, London, Paris and Rome, USA and the Middle East, etc… We have a modern and international airport terminal.

®  Addis Ababa by night with many restaurants with diverse cultural dances and colorful, tasty, mouth watering foods…be it vegetable fish or meat dishes and traditional hospitality from beautiful Abesha ladies.

®  Merkato, the largest market in Africa.

®  How about showing Menelik’s and Haile Selassie’s palaces, (The White House is the highest tourist attraction in Washington D.C.)

Thanks to Clean & Green Addis Ababa Initiative, our city is getting better and better. The Clean and Green Board Members have a vision in 2025 to turn Addis Ababa into a world-class city: It is possible! (Yichalal!)

The mayor of Addis Ababa Ato Arkebe Ekubay taught us a good lesson by completely reorganizing the staff and restructuring the whole city administration and bringing in new attitudes, new faces and young people. That is the only way things will work. Please, let us wake up and save the tourism industry.   The Tourism Commission spends a lot of money for trade fairs in Paris, London, Berlin and USA.  We can use at least some of the   money spent on fairs to re-organize ourselves and call a national conference to save the tourism industry.

Let us clean our house before we go out marketing. Let us market our Ethiopia and its friendly people, its varied culture, its colorful food and costumes, its festive holidays, its beautiful mountains and rivers and its sincere hospitality. Our diversity should be our strength let’s capitalize on it.

Do you know that today countries like South Africa, China and US account 60 to 80% of their annual earnings from domestic tourism? To boost the domestic market like I said new attitude is expected from Tourism and the public. New campaigns and new visions are needed to educated, encourage and create public awareness. We need to empower the private sector. Then and only then will the small business prosper.

It all boils down to attitude change everywhere …the hotels to treat local people like guests, even Ethiopian airlines to treat local travelers the same as our foreigner guests, because all of us earn our money the hard way. No preferential treatments when we travel to Bahirdar, for example.

We have to stop thinking tourism is only for foreigners and stop thinking about the high-end tourist only. We have to target even the lowest income group with packages and accommodation that is suitable to their various mean. Schools could serve as the hub of domestic tourism and I know parents will be very happy to see their children contribute rather than seeing their kids hanging out in coffee shops or chewing chat.

Let me mention something that may be a farfetched idea for tourism. How about the upcoming revival of the African community, the free movement of the East Africa region? Ethiopia has 140 million potential customers.

Hello! Wake up!