Abstract:
Ethiopia is endowed with numerous tourist attractions resource potentials ranging from physical
to cultural, all of which are important for the country’s tourism development. Despite these, the
tourism resource potentials and its developmental challenges were not assessed in many areas of
the country including the study area. Thus, the study was conducted with the objective of
identifying tourism resource potential and its developmental challenges in Tach Gayint woreda.
A cross-sectional research design with qualitative and quantitative approaches has been used.
The study used both primary and secondary sources of data. The target populations were selected
using purposive sampling from government officials, tourism experts and local communities.
Structured questionnaires, an in-depth interview, focus group discussion and observation were
employed for data collection. Purposive and random sampling techniques were used to select the
study woreda and the sample respondents respectively. The quantitative data was analyzed using
frequency, percentage and meanwhile qualitative data was used to triangulate and authenticate
the study. According to the findings of the study the major tourist development challenge in the
study area including low levels of community participation, lack of stakeholder’s collaboration,
poor tourist facility and infrastructure and weak policy implementation, shortage of
infrastructural development, lack of community awareness toward tourism, lack of promotion and
marketing, lack of collaboration among stakeholders, limited role of government, shortage of
training institutions, lack of contribution from host community were identified as challenges for
tourism development in the study area. Therefore, it is recommended that the government bodies
and other tourism sector stakeholders give special attention supporting initiatives aimed at
reducing all challenges.
