POTENTIALS AND CHALLENGES FOR TOURISM DEVELOPMENT: THE CASE OF ZEQUALA WEREDA, WAGE HIMRA ZONE

Abstract

ABSTRACT Tourism has become one of the most significant forces for change in the world today. The tourism potential of a given space is defined as all natural components, culturalhistorical, socio-demographic, technical and economic, scientifically recognized. The main purpose of this study is to describe and/or identify potentials and challenges for tourism development, the case of Zequala Wereda, in Wage Himra zone. The researcher used to employed descriptive research design. It employed both qualitative and quantitative research approaches. The subjects of this study were culture and tourism experts, kebele administrative leaders, church leaders, natural resource experts, hotel owners, and local tourism association members. The sample method was purposive and simple random sampling technique. From total population, 136 samples of respondents were used for questionnaire and interview 10 informants were used. Data were collected through interviews, questionnaires, observation, and document analysis; both primary and secondary data were collected. The qualitative data is analyzed manually; quantitative data were analysis by use descriptive statistics mean, frequency and percents. The result shows that tangible and intangible cultural and natural tourism resources are the major tourism potentials of Zequala. Cultural resources including churches, festivals, building, ways of life, traditional food and way of preparation, religious places and practices, secular game ceremonies and hand crafts. Natural tourism potentials are landscape aesthetics, climate, mountain, gorges and lake. However, Zequala wereda tourism potentials are hindered by different challenges which are lack of awareness, inaccessibility, political instability, lack of smart tourism planning ,global standard, lack of rule and regulation and budget, lack of professional and lack of effective tourism market. Therefore, Zequala wereda tourism potentials are not developed as actual tourism destination. So all concerned bode or stakeholders should participate for the development of tourism and to reduce the challenges of potential tourism of Zequala wereda.