A Study on Socio-Economic Impacts of Tourism in Axum Town, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia
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Date
2011-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This research paper tries to assess the multi-dimensional impacts of tourism in Axum which increases
from time to time as the tourist flow increase, identifying problems which hindered the tourism
environment and examining the magnitude of the multi-dimensional linkages between tourism and the
local community.
The main objective of the study is to understand the socio-economic impact of tourism. To achieve the
objective the researcher designed a proper methodology which includes both primary and secondary
data. The primary data collected through questionnaires, KII, FGD and observation from 208 total
respondents. To support the primary data secondary data also collected and all were analyzed both
qualitatively and quantitatively.
As the finding indicates, tourism has a multi-dimensional impact in terms of economically, socioculturally,
environmentally as well as politically. For instance the positive contribution of tourism are:
source of employment for 2389 peoples and the number of employed workers in business HHs also
increase by 11% every year, similarly the income of business HHs also increase by 8.8% every year as
the tourist flow increase. Similar to economic impact the sector has also socio-cultural, environmental
and political importance such as infrastructural improvement, preservation of attractions, create
environmental awareness and encouraging power and librating effect of women’s are few among the
positive impacts. In the contrary the sector has also negative impacts in terms of motivating begging and
dependence, seasonal unemployment and unstable income, aggravating prostitution and student dropout,
loss of cultural identity, environmental and heritage degradation and taking of intelligence are few
among the negative one but the positive impact of tourism is out weighted than the negative one.
Even though, the sector has its own contribution in the town in multi-dimensional way the town cannot
gain from the sector as its potential of attraction endowment due to poor infrastructure and
accommodation provision, social related problem such as begging, theft and high entrance fee of
attractions, inadequate in quality and quantity service pervasion, Lack of awareness and promotional
works, lack of coordination as well as geographical location are among the few factors for the
underdevelopment of the sector in the town.
Finally this paper recommended that participation and coordination of all concerned bodies and stake holder s is very imperative in supporting and expansion of infrastructures which helps to increase tourist flow and income earned from it and its consequences to socio economic befits by giving higher attention to minimize the negative impacts
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Geography and Environmental Studies