The Impact of Tourism on Culture on Tourist Destination Area: A Case Study of Hamer People
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Date
2012-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Tourism is an important source of foreign exchange earning income, employment cultural exchanges, environmental protection or preservation of heritages and with its distinct advantages tourism is postulated as one of important industry for poverty alleviation i.e. by creation of job opportunities, boosting up of sales of different goods and services such as agricultural products and handicrafts. On the other hand, it has a negative impact on the local community by facilitating or increasing number of migrants and as a result it encourages dependency, commercial sex, acculturation, environmental degradation or pollution, etc. So to identify problems that have impacts on the tourism environment and the host community, this study has importance. Therefore, the major objective of this study is to assess the impact of tourism on culture on tourist destination area particularly on Turmi community and their neighborhood. To achieve this objective the researcher employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. Thus, based on the collected data, the positive and negative impacts of tourism on culture have been discussed. Then, the study revealed the positive and negative findings. The positive impacts are production of local handicrafts were found to be high and it also sources of employment opportunity as a result their economy grow up the expansion of basic physical and social infrastructures, enabled them to prevent their culture, etc. and negatively the tourism activity influence the local community such as the local pastoralists depend on the tourism activity (they left their farming activity and made them to depend on the tourist, this can also lead to dependency and begging), acculturation particularly material culture and commodification; a good example of this is ‘evangadi’, environmental degradation/deforestation for road construction and lodges and hotels but tourism’s overall positive impacts outweigh the negative ones. Tourism and culture are unseparable, so the researcher recommended basic points to minimize the negative impacts of tourism and to maximize the positive ones.
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Impact of Tourism on Culture