Religious Tourism Development: The Case of Lalibela Town, Amhara Region, Ethiopia
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Date
2013
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Publisher
AAU
Abstract
The overall significance of tourism in general and religious tourism in particular has got recognition
from different scholars and organizations. However, its development mainly in Africa has faced numerous
challenges. Ethiopia is unique and sacred in Africa for the ancient two monotheistic world religions
namely Islam and Christianity. The existence of the ancient religions together with traditional African
beliefs and their spiritual elements, made Ethiopia most preferable religious tourism destination in
Africa. One of the ample religious sites of the country, Lalibela town, is the study area. The objectives of
this study entitled with 'Religious Tourism Development: The case of Lalibela town Amhara region,
Ethiopia' are identifying the religious tourism development challenges and opportunities, assessing
mechanisms that help to promote opportunities and minimize the challenges of religious tourism
development, Analyzing the ways in which religious tourism can serve as a tool in conserving heritages,
empowe ring communities and bringing sustainable development. The study is hoth qualitative and
quantitative in its design. Interview, questionnaire non participant observation, and document analysis
are the mail! data gathering tools used in this study. The quantitative data collected were analyzed using
SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) and presented through tables, graphs and charts where as
the qualitative information were precisely narrated. Accordingly, the findings of the study demonstrated
that the town of Lalibela is one of the most impressive religious tourism destinations in Ethiopia. The
town is endowed with ample religious attributes. However, there are also challenges influencing the
development of the site as the most successful religious tourism destination in the country. These
challenges of religious tourism development in Lalibe/a town are properly identified in this study. Thus,
minimization or alleviation of all identified challenges and effective promotion and utilization of
opportunities with proper involvement of the local community would enahle religious tourism to be an
effective instrument for local community empmverment, heritage conservation and sustainable
development in the town as well as the country at larg
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Keywords
Awareness, Challenges, Local community, Monotheistic, Opportunities, Religious Heritage, Religiolls Tourism, Sacred, Sustainable development