Branding Ethiopia as A Tourist Destination: Domestic Tourists Perspective

Domestic tourism is the largest form of tourism in the world, both in terms of tourist flow and revenue. Nevertheless, relatively it is overlooked by governments and scholars of most developing countries. Consequently, this article has tried to contribute to domestic tourism literature by exploring challenges of domestic tourism in Ethiopia, and evaluating the Customer-Based Brand Equity for Tourist to evaluate the Customer-Based Brand Equity for Tourist Destination (CBBETD) of Ethiopia from the perspective of the domestic tourists of Ethiopia. The research was utilized primary data collected through questionnaires. The suitability of the CBBETD model was tested in a survey to 291 domestic tourists of Ethiopia and 37 tourism experts. In line with this, the findings confirmed the research hypotheses concerning the suitability of the model, as it is illustrated both in correlation and regression result, as well as the highest contribution of image for the generation of CBBETD among the Ethiopian domestic tourist. The findings showed that awareness, image, quality, and loyalty all can significantly contribute to the CBBE of Ethiopia as tourist destination. Actually, the image dimension was the one that gathered the highest ranking, followed by quality, loyalty, and awareness. The result further revealed that tourism in Ethiopia, in general, has been rising, but the absence of domestic tourism data at the national level weakens the generalization and was evidence to the level of attention given to the sector. Domestic tourism was found to be misconceived by most tourism experts and businesses. Besides, the theoretical contribution, the practical implications of this research can be relevant for the Ethiopian tourism stakeholders, and in particular to the national Destination Marketing Organization, Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In addition to finding a way of measuring performance, the insights that were collected from the sample of Ethiopian domestic tourists can be helpful to adjust the marketing efforts to this market and maximize brand equity. Key Words: Brand Awareness, Image, Brand Loyalty, Perceived Quality, Over all Brand Equity, Training, Domestic tourism, Ethiopia. DOI: 10.7176/JTHS/68-04 Publication date: January 30th 2025