Factors Influencing the Performance of Pilgrimage and Heritage Tourism: The Case of Lalibela, Ethiopia
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Date
2021-06
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A.A.U
Abstract
Ethiopia, registered 13 tangible and intangible cultural and natural heritages under UNESCO world heritage list, that makes the country one of the few highly gifted with natural and historical tourism resources. However, although having better tourist destinations, and unique in historical heritages sites like Lalibela, Ethiopia is lagging behind other East African destinations. The rate at which the economic potential accrue to a destination significantly depends on various factors such as the tourist attraction site itself, hospitality of various stockholders, transport service, facilities like hotels, resorts, restaurants, shops and soon. Although the current multibillion dollar project on Gorgora, Koyesha, and Wenchi could create new natural tourist destinations, these would not complement the heritage tourism rather it would create competition.
The positive experience with the tourist services and other facilities given by specific tourism destination, can encourage tourist memory and such travel experience can enhance the reliability to the destination. Therefore, it is essential for the management of tourist destinations to provide the best service for their respective tourists’ in encourage the creation of satisfaction and loyalty to tourists that can encourage increasing revenue and profits for tourist destinations.
This paper using descriptive type study with both quantitative and qualitative research, assess the factors that influence the heritage and pilgrim tourism of Lalibela. Nonprobability convenience sampling and random sampling technique was used to select samples domestic and international tourists. The final finding uncovers that even though the country has very popular and unique destination, which is preferred by many tourists to visit frequently, increasing tourist satisfaction and overall performance is highly dependent on attraction, and facilities while transport and hospitality has also impact.
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Keywords
performance of pilgrimage; performance of heritage