Assessing Tourism Product Development: The Case of Mekelle City, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia
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Date
2013-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Assessing tourism product development in this study is mainly undertaken to understand
the existing products, facilitate product diversification, and for improvement of tourism
products. Tourism product is all about visitors experience from the existing products and
services, activities, and attractions. The main objective of this study is to assess the
tourism producldevelopment of Mekelle city in order to come up with diversified tourism
products so as to improve visitor experiences in the city. To achieve this objective the
study has employed both quantitative and qualitative research methods as well as
stratified sampling technique throughout the research study. And the data collection
instruments employed includes both primary data and secondary data. The collected data
from questionnaires were analyzed through SPSS version 16 using descriptive statistics
and frequencies, while the qualitative data from the concerned bodies and the data
obtained through observation were analyzed using descriptive and interpretive methods.
The major findings of the study show that Mekelle city has high tourism potential.
However, the tourism product development activity is very weak. This is attributed to the
problems that attractions are not data based, not mapped, and packaged. Even the two
popular attractions, Atse Yohannes IV Museumand Addi Haki Martyr's statue, have very
little tourism product development. The accessibility to most attractions and the quality
of product and service given by Mekelle city's tourism cluster and tourism business
providers is poor and not adequate for visitor's experience as well as for better tourism
development of the city. Though there are huge opportunities like the attractions, being
the capital city of the regional state but there are also challenges that need to be
minimized through different techniques such as weak coordination among the key
Stakeholders, less trained man power and inadequate finance and others. Therefore, for
better tourism development of the city, the concerned bodies should have to participate in
all wings of the industry.
Key words; Assessing, Tourism, Tourism Product, Tourism Product Development, Mekelle
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Keywords
Assessing, Tourism, Tourism Product, Tourism Product Development, Mekelle