Assessing the Role of Cultural Attractions at Merkato Market for Tourism Development in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
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Date
2020-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Now a day, culture is a major asset for tourism developmentand it is serving as a major factor
in the attractiveness of most destinations like Merkato which is an open air market and cultural
destination in Addis Ababa City that stands to signify Ethiopian cultural spots. Despite the
fact that Merkato cultural attractions play a significant role for tourism development, they
were not properly tapped and managed to sustain as a remarkable attraction. Hence this study
was designed assessing the role of cultural attraction at Merkato market for tourism
development in Addis Ababa Ethiopia.The study employed both qualitative and quantitative
research designs, Quantitative data were gathered from both international and domestic
tourists and owners of shopping and qualitative data were collected through the semistructured interviews from tour operators ,tour guide, government sector .Purposive and
simple random sampling techniques were used to obtain data among 300 hundred sampled
participants for interviews and questionnaires. Quantitative and qualitative data were
analyzed through descriptive statistics and thematic analysis, respectively.The major attraction
of Merkato are rich anddiverse; they comprisereligious institution and their cultural product,
souvenirs’ shop, various species, cultural medicine, social interaction tera and berend that
explained what they did inside. The findings of thestudy revealed that Merkato open air market
now a day’s encounters several challenges, such as lacks of parking area. Safety and security,
traffic conjunction, fluctuations in price of cultural attractions and opens air market
transactions moving to modern building construction. Due to these factors the biggest open air
market has been diminishing its attractiveness. But, this cultural attraction for tourism
development plays a huge contribution to the development of a country, so that the government
has understood the tourism potentials of the country and made some progresses toward
enhancement, protection, promotion, preservation, and sustainable utilization of all cultural.
So, the researcher suggested government and different stakeholders to provide required
attention to keep this nonrenewable cultural attraction.
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Keywords
Cultural Attraction, Tourism. Merkato, Cultural Tourism, Open Mesuem, Ethiopia