Status of Tourism Marketing and Promotion: Gambella People’s National Regional State, Gambella, South West Ethiopia.

Nowadays tourism is one of the largest and increasingly recognized fastest growing industries globally. Tourism marketing and promotion is a core processes in the tourism industry and is one of the most important procedures of identifying the need of customers through an integrated marketing approach and by designing genuine products or services to target prospective consumers. Even though Gambella Region has an abundance of attractions and tourism products, less attention is given to tourism marketing and promotion. The study aimed at assessing the status of marketing and promotion strategies for sustainable tourism development at Gambella Peoples Nationals Regional State of Ethiopia. The study involved both desk and field research and a convenience sampling was used of tourists (n= 23). A purposive sampling method was adopted for personnel of Gambella Cultural Tourism Bureau and Gambella National Park office (n=15), Majang Zone Administration (n=19), hotels and resorts (n= 27) and NGOs (n= 5).Accordingly, this study involved (n=89) respondents from four sample categories. Collected raw data were chosen, refined, categorized, edited, evaluated, coded and entered to SPSS software version 20. Different methods of data analysis were used to investigate different marketing and promotion strategies. Descriptive statistics were computed for relevant variables and information obtained from the key informants was described in what is hopefully meaningful content. Even though, the Region has tremendous tourism potential, the findings of this study illustrates that there is weak marketing and promotion of the tourism industry in the region. Less attention is given to inter-alia, the roles of website development, information updating, linkages with tour operators, developing information centers, competition, guidebook development and product knowledge. Providing trained experts and filling a knowledge gap regarding tourism marketing and promotion, could be resolved through capacity building and tourism marketing and promotion would thus be enhanced via connecting with large tour