Potentials and Challenges of Promoting Bunno Bedelele Zone Major Tourism Destinations, South Western Ethiopia

Ethiopia in general and Bunno Bedelle Zone in particular, is rich in both natural and cultural tourism resources. Conversely, it’s economic, socio-cultural and environmental role is insignificant due to problems mainly related to the lack of infrastructural development and marketing of the destination. In order to make tourism development more sustainable, it is important to look into the problems associated with promoting and marketing of the tourist destinations. Thus, as to achieve the objective of the study a mixed research methodology was implemented. Since the aim of this study was to assess the potentials and Challenges of promoting Bunno Bedelle Zone major tourism destinations site. The research was typically descriptive in nature. In this study, both primary and secondary data was gathered. The data was collected through extensive, questionnaire, interview, focus group discussion, and field observation. The collected data were coded, processed and analyzed with the help of SPSS. The finding of the study demonstrated that the promotional activities of Bunno Bedelle Zone failed to meet their ultimate goal to become an important tourist destination because of limitation in community capacity building in tourism concept, lack of expertise in the area to develop ecotourism and lack of basic infrastructure like absence of adequate transport facilities, communication facilities, health care facilities ,accommodation service, Above all, awareness problems, and lack of cooperation between stakeholders aggravated problems which prevent sustainability. To establish the ecotourism and minimizing the challenges of tourist destinations, there should be broader awareness creation program for the wider communities to develop community sense of ownership for their own resource and further investigations is needed to identify and promote the potential tourism resources of the areas. Keywords: Tourism potentials, Promotion, Tourism destinations, Bunno Beddele Zone, Ethiopia. DOI: 10.7176/JTHS/52-01 Publication date: December 31st 202