Role of Orthodox Churches in Tourism Development of Ethiopia: The Case of Addis Alem St. Mary Church
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Date
2019-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study investigates tourism at Debre Tsyon St.Mary Church of Addis Alem. The thesis
examines three key objectives: exploring tourism attraction of the church, exploring and
examining the existing role of the church in tourist attraction, and identifying the major
challenges which hinder tourism development in the church. To achieve the objectives of the
study, the researcher made a systematic and extensive review of related literature and
employed a mix of qualitative and survey methods.The mixed approach was used in the hope
that it can improve the validity of the findings and successfully address the central research
questions. Data was collected from 363 self-administered questionnaire respondents, made
observation, and conducted semi structured interview with 19 key informants. Descriptive
methods of qualitative and quantitative data analysis was employed and used SPSS version
24 to describe frequency distribution and percentage.The church administration, local
government officials, local communities, visitors of the church and the museum and also the
school found in the town participated in giving data to this research. This research found that
Addis Alem St.Mary church has great tourism potential. The key tourism attractions are the
natural and historical attractions which include the historical value of the church as such,
the landscape, the arctchtural planning of the church, the paintings of the church, the bell
tower, the museum and its collections, the timket festival of the church, the religious school of
the church, the forest around the church and the holy water. The other finding is that in light
of immense tourism resources of the church, tourism in the area is not sufficinetly developed
apart from some social, economic, educational, and religious contributions. The research
showed that there are different factors that hinder tourism development in the area. These
are lack of promotion, lack of awareness, lack of integration, lack of standard museum, lack
of tourist facility, lack of infrastructure, the problem of administration and absence of
community involvement and participation in tourism businesses, and absence of promotional
activities and lack of knowledge about tourism and its benefits lack of risk management
mechanisms.The thesis concluded that since there are immense tourism resources in the
church, and the church is locted near Addis Ababa and the surroundings of the church itself
have many tourism resources discussed in the thesis, it is important to unleash the tourism
potential for the beneift of the local community, the church itself and the country at large.
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Keywords
Addis Alem Church, Tourism attractions, challenges, Ethiopian