BY DARGIE KAHSAY
With its pristine beauty, historical ruins and places, fascinating cultural and traditional activities, Ethiopia is becoming among world’s best tourists’ sought-for destination countries. It has turned a rising start in the tourism sector with its best and preferable destinations for all tourists with different interests. Its cultural richness, traditional and religious holidays, ancient historical places, beautiful geographical destinations with different features, development of new investments in natural destinations guarantee Ethiopia to become the most preferable tourist destinations especially after the outbreak of COVID-19.
A renowned travel media, National Geography UK has named Ethiopia as one of the top five destination places of the world to travel to in January 2023. Citing the two most important Ethiopian religious holidays, the Ethiopian Christmas (Gena) and the Ethiopian Epiphany (Timket) that takes place in January, National Geography UK recommended travelers to visit Ethiopia during January.
The media in its Travel and Adventure category of the 2023 New Year publication stated that the weather condition of Ethiopia is conducive to visit Danakil Depression in Afar and Omo Valley where temperature lowers and roads are accessible respectively this time of the year.
Similarly, in January 2020, Forbes listed Ethiopia as one of the top seven tourism destinations of the world in post COVID-19 period. Forbes.com in 2020 predicted that Ethiopia is among top seven countries with the potential of becoming the rising start in travel destination of the post COVID-19 world. It praised Ethiopia’s most fascinating historical backgrounds.
As to the January 2020 Forbes.com report, out of the 54 nations that make up Africa, Ethiopia has the most fascinating historic background with its second civilization on earth to adopt Christianity, the only African nation to defeat a European power in battle, at Adwa and resist colonialism during the Scramble for Africa. In addition, it stated that Ethiopia is believed to be a place where the earliest human ancestors first came from.
As to Forbes.com, “visitors to this unique country will find a truly diverse scope of natural beauty, the western edges of Ethiopia are home to lush rainforest, which quickly give way to the towering peaks of the Ethiopian Highlands as one ventures east. If the rich history and spectacular natural sites don’t propel this nation to stardom, the national cuisines surely will, eating injera by hand is a cultural experience that everybody should take part in at least once in their life.”
Though, Ethiopia is rich in natural, historical, cultural and traditional destinations for tourists, the promotion of its tourism potential is yet poor. Especially, these days, digital promotion and promoting digital services in tourism sector are preferable to attract more tourists and to increase the influx of tourists. Particularly, to attract youth travelers, promoting tourism potentials using the digital infrastructure is very helpful and countries are using this opportunity to attract youth travelers.
According to global data, the number of youth travelers is growing and these youth travelling out of their country are more attracted due to the digital promotions and the online systems that are easily accessible to get information, to buy packages and other facilities.
Recently, an application, Visit Ethiopia, was launched by the Ministry of Tourism and Sport after it developed by Space Science and Geo-spatial Institute (SSGI) with the goal of promoting Ethiopia’s tourism destination sites. The application was developed using local and international languages to be easily accessible through android and iOS operating systems of mobile technology.
According to SSGI, the application indicates the GPS of tourist destination sites, service providers near the tourist destination sites, market places, weather condition of the destinations and other necessary guides for tourists. In addition, the application contains a space for experience sharing of those who visited the area to share their stay in the destination to others, which is a testimonial promotion. The ‘experience sharing’ site takes features of those who visited the area posted ideas, videos and photographs during their stay in the site.
To promote visitors to share ideas, videos, photos with captions about the destination they visited, the application was developed with providing rewards. During the launching ceremony of “Visit Ethiopia” mobile application, heads of SSGI and Ministry of Tourism and Sport disclosed that digitalizing the tourism sector is vital to exploit the country’s potential of the sector and would help to promote the country’s destinations easily.
Digital Marketing Head at Ministry of Tourism and Sport, Desalegn Abebaw said that digital technology is becoming vital in the tourism sector both to promote destination sites and to ease bureaucracies as services and packages are provided online for travelers.
According to reports, in 2022 the dominant visitors were youths globally and the youth were initiated by the digital promotions by the destination countries especially on social media. Countries are suing social media and other digital platforms to attract tourists and the top tourist destinations in 2022 used digital platforms to attract the tourists and benefited from them.
According to Digital marketing head, Desalegn, digital tourism is becoming a key factor in promoting tourism and attracting tourists. Digital tourism for him means applying digital technologies in the tourism industry through different mechanisms both to promote destination sites to attract tourists and providing online services for those who planned to visit the sites.
“In tourism, there is destination site selection, transportation, accommodation of hotel services, physical tour,” Desalegn said adding that “thanks to digital tourism, travelers can adjust all these services before they physically travel to the destination using digital technologies.” As to him, nowadays, digital tourism is facilitating and making easy travel for tourists as tour packages and visas are available through online platforms thanks to digital technology.
“Comparing to other service sectors, tourism is becoming the most beneficiary sector from the development of digital technologies though digital technology is crucially important for the development of all service sectors,” Desalegn noted. As to Desalegn the trend of tourism is totally changed following the development of digital platforms. In the current world, every traveler first has all details about the destination he/she selected to visit using the digital platforms and the .Other packages are processed before s/he physically traveled to the specific place or country.
Digital technology makes travel easy and services easily accessible. Due to this reason, countries are digitalizing their tourism sector and using the platform to promote their destinations and to provide online services for those who plan to visit their country. In addition to websites of governmental tourism offices, travel and tour agencies, hotels and other service providers, applications are developing in the sector to easily promote sites in one center and the nearby services providers.
According to a tourism expert who stated his view to a local media, most travelers visiting Ethiopia are comparably senior citizens. He stated that Ethiopia should promote its tourism potential to attract more tourists especially youth tourists. For him, countries are more benefiting from youth travellers as they are not budgeted compared with aged visitors. “If youth visitors get beautiful services and sites, they are more open to use additional services than they planned before. As youth travellers are more active in social media and other digital platforms, they choose their travel destinations using the promotions and other attractions they saw on the digital platform,” he stated.
According to the experts, all digital and social media platforms are suitable to promote tourism destinations and the services in the sector. Not only promoting the destinations through digital means but also digitalizing all services including applying the E-visa is critical to attract more visitors and to exploit the rich tourism potential of Ethiopia.
Desalegn said that Ethiopia has not shortage of destinations. Promoting this potential using the digital platform can benefit the country to maximize its gain from its untapped potential in the sector. Similarly, modernizing and digitalizing all services related to the tourism is very important to make Ethiopia the best tourist destination of the country.
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 27 JANUARY 2023
