Hawassa town and its surroundings, situated in the southern part of Ethiopia, have highrnecotourism potential due to the abundant natural and cultural resource especially landscape,rnthe lake and shore of the lake, moderate ecological conditions and wetlands that contribute tornthe development of the country by means of tourism. Therefore, the main objectives of thisrnstudy were evaluating and identifying the ecotourism potential of the area using RS and GISrntechniques for optimal exploitation of the area for tourism purpose. Ecotourism is consideredrnas one of the most attractive subsets of tourism industry, which can contribute for naturalrnresource conservation and local development, if properly managed. Integrated approaches ofrnboth RS and GIS techniques were used to generate visibility map, land-use/land-cover maprn(using 2011 TM satellite image), slope map, elevation map, proximity to the lake map,rnnatural and cultural attraction sites point map, fauna and flora protection map, annual rainfallrnmap, annual temperature map and proximity to the road map. These eleven factor maps werernoverlaid to evaluate the ecotourism suitability map of the study area. To make an accuraterndecision in relation to the most appropriate ecotourism suitability map, weighted overlayrnanalysis and multi-criteria decision techniques were implemented. The results were classifiedrnin to four ecotourism potential areas (highly suitable, moderately suitable marginally suitablernand no potential). These results are further verified by ecotourism potential sites point datarncollected in the field and pervious reports. The largest part of the area was identified as lowrnsuitable for ecotourism. Hence, this study concludes that Hawassa town and its surroundingsrncan contribute for the national development through sustainable use of ecotourism potentialrnof the area.