The role of media in tourism promotion: A case study in Ethiopia

Media has a pervasive power for good or bad. Ethiopia suffers a lot from negative media presentations, even though the country hosts many glamorous features. And also its tangible and intangible tourist attractions can serve as a tool to change the images of the country in the international community. The country has more than Twelve UNISCO registered world heritages and more natural and cultural endowments, yet it benefits less from them. This work attempts to assess the tourism potential of the country and its actual gain from the sector. Moreover, it focuses on what role the media has to play in the process. To put this into effect, mixed methodology has been used and the result showed that, there exists a great gap between the potential that the country has and its benefit from it. The bridge is widened by lack of promotion through the different media outlets. The qualitative methodology was helpful to analyze contents related to the new media outlets while quantitative one addresses the views of one hundred tourists who have the experience of visiting the country. Hence the result revealed that the country has not been benefited from its potential. Key words Tourism, Promotion, Image, Destination, Media.