Assessment of Sustainable Tour Operation Business Practices, Challenges and Opportunities: The Case of Tour Operators Located In Addis Ababa
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Date
2023-07-20
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The main objective of this study was to assess sustainable tour operation business practices, challenges and opportunities located in Addis Ababa. The study employed both quantitative and qualitative data to achieve the objectives. Out of 333 registered tour operators in the Ministry of Tourism, sample size of 182 questionnaires were given by the researcher to tour operator companies and an interview were engaged. Quantitative data was collected from 172 participants drawn from different tour operators on a position of tour operators and tour managers. Qualitative data was collected from 4 interview respondents, 1 from the Ethiopian tour operators’ association, 1 from Ethiopian tour guides association, 2 from tourism ministry based on purposive sampling technique. Quantitative data was analyzed using descriptive statistics analysis, while qualitative data was analyzed through interview analysis. Sustainable tour operation practices are divided into tour operation business management practices and sustainable destination management practices. The findings of the study revealed that the aggregate mean values for tour operation business management practices (x=3.294). Furthermore, the grand mean value for sustainable destination management practices by tour operators is 3.75, which is a bit higher than the other dimension. The researcher also found that the major challenges facing tour operators in Addis Ababa are unethical business practices (x=3.95) followed by Poor linkage with international tour operating companies (x=3.91), poor national image (x=3.44), lack of stakeholder’s collaboration (x=2.53), and global pandemics such as COVID 19 (x=2.48), and poor technology usage (x=2.48). Therefore, based on these findings, the researcher recommended that in order to ensure sustainability of tour operation businesses, it is important to mitigate the aforementioned challenges
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Tour operation, business practices, sustainable, challenges, opportunities, tour operators located in Addis Ababa