Assessment of Ethiopia’s Image as a Tourist Destination and Its Implication for Marketing Strategy
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Date
2014-05
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The image of tourist destinations is important, because it influences both the decisions of tourists make about what destination to visit and the level of satisfaction tourists have, based on the actual experience at the destination. At the international level, destinations often compete on nothing more than the image held in the minds of potential travelers. Therefore, marketers of tourist destinations spend money, time and effort to create the right favorable image to guide prospective travelers in their decision to visit or re-visit their destinations. The goal of this research was to investigate the image of Ethiopia as a tourist destination from the perspective of top five tourist generating countries (USA, UK, German, Italy and France tourists) and its implication for marketing strategy. Two surveys were constructed and administered. The first survey (unstructured) measured the holistic image of Ethiopia. The results from this survey were coded with a qualitative methodology. The second survey (structured) measured the attribute image of Ethiopia in relation to important tourist destination attributes. The results from the second survey were put into a statistical program by using SPSS 16.0. Based on the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods of interviews and survey this research reveals the fact that the overall image of Ethiopia as perceived by the selected foreign tourists is positive. However this study also reflected the fact that Ethiopia’s image as a travel destination is a fusion of both positive and negative perceptions. As is evident from the results Ethiopia’s image seemed to vary across its various tourism destination attributes. This indicated that different perceptions of evaluation of image with respect to different attributes, will affect the overall image. Results from the unstructured survey indicate that travelers have the strongest holistic image of Ethiopia as a scenic nature destination. Results from the structured survey indicate that the image tourist in general have of Ethiopia as a tourist destination is a country that is a safe place to visit, offers opportunity for adventure, is friendly and hospitable and possesses scenic and natural beauty. Results also indicate that people have a strong and clear image of Ethiopia.
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Keywords
tourist destinations, potential travelers, marketing strategy