Ethiopian Airlines Role In Tourism Destination Competitiveness Implications For Travel And Tourism Development In Ethiopia

Although tourism is increasingly promoted as an important source of economic growth, especially in Ethiopia,rnwhere its contribution has become crucially important to the country‘s GDP growth ---this in turn, is believed asrnpositively impacts on the travel and tourism industry GDP in general and hospitality industry employment inrnparticular, yet without an efficient air transport system, it is almost impossible for landlocked developing nations,rnlike Ethiopia, for ensuring its sustainability. Indeed, almost 100 percent of the international tourist -arrivals inrnEthiopia is through Air-Transport (this means, with extreme cases, 100 percent of international tourist arrivalsrnaccount for this form of transportation mode has been guaranteed by Air- transport). Hence, this study aims atrnexploring into the contribution of Ethiopian Airlines key roles, for facilitating tourist arrivals and departuresrnthrough its hub at Bole International Airport , in tourist market-making activities, conveying tourist inflows, routernnetwork expansion, foreign exchange services, tourism service infrastructure improvements, promoting endowedrnresources, etc. along with its major stakeholders--- to-promote Ethiopia‘s endowed resources within its worldrndestination- countries and to attract international tourists to Ethiopia . Thus, the study is intended to answer thernresearch questions (1) what are the Ethiopian Airlines key roles in promoting tourism resources? (2) to what extentrnEthiopian Airlines has to take a lead, in promoting tourism resources ,so as Ethiopia ranks against other countries,rnwith its national full of tourism potentials--to maintaining its tourism destination competiveness position in Africarnand beyond via Ethiopian Airlines ? To achieve the objective of the study, mixed research method was employed.rnPrimary data was administered randomly from 360 international tourists who used to arrive in Ethiopia, in Marchrnand April 2019, for leisure as well as business travel. The tourists also filled out the survey questions for the study,rnalong with 40 participants who were selected from the major stakeholders in the industry. Thematically codedrnempirical and documentary data were analyzed on the view points of the theoretical and conceptual framework ofrnthe research design, and assumptions modeling were also established on the basis of the research questions. Anrnimportant finding emerged in this study was that, despite EAL has been operating route network expansion in 107rndestination- countries throughout the world, as a key role, and promoting Ethiopia‘s endowed resources throughrnconventional and digital media aggressively; yet travel and tourism destination competitiveness Index (WTTC,rn2007-2017) rank of Ethiopia since 2007- 2017/18 ,was averaged only 118.33/140) .So, it hasn‘t been significantlyrnimproved ; nor Ethiopia‘s world heritages hadn‘t been well known by international tourists in the globe.rnFurthermore, the core finding of the study has shown that there is a loosely created synergy between the EAL‘s keyrnroles and its major stakeholders‘ strategic plan. Ultimately, their plans were merely linked within the EAL‘s visionrn2020. However, a number of limitations need to be considered, because of tourist service infrastructure and arnloosely created synergy among the major stakeholders in the industry, Ethiopia is not harnessing the existingrntourism potential from its natural and cultural world heritage sites. Although the study has framed the preliminaryrnfindings, and yet further research should be done to better understanding of EAL‘s key roles in tourism destinationrncompetitiveness perspective.

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