Abstract: Tourism has been emerged as one of the effective tools in eradicating poverty. Ethiopia has huge tourism potentials like natural, non-natural, historical and cultural resources. Gambella Region is one of the attractive tourismdestinations located at South West of Ethiopia. But, its tourism industry development is in infant stage. Nonetheless, limited study has carried out on identifying opportunities. Hence, the main objective of this study was identifying opportunities to enhance tourism industry development in the Region. To do so, key informants from three zones, five regional offices and thirteen woredas has purposively selected based on the defined criteria. Altogether, 103 key informants were interviewed besides to field observation. The collected firsthand data were edited, categorized, arranged and organized and encoded into SPSS software version 20. Qualitative data was being analyzed in meaningful content description whereas quantitative data was being analyzed in numerical values. Findings of this study revealed that recruiting trained human power, organizing local tour guide associations, making linkage with tour operators, developing tourist guidebook, installing tourist information centers, enhancing promotion and marketing of tourism destinations, information update, improving infrastructures development, and installing accommodation deliverers are the major opportunities to enhance tourism industry development in the Region.Abstract: Tourism has been emerged as one of the effective tools in eradicating poverty. Ethiopia has huge tourism potentials like natural, non-natural, historical and cultural resources. Gambella Region is one of the attractive tourismdestinations located at South West of Ethiopia. But, its tourism industry development is in infant stage. Nonetheless, limit...Show More
