Dear Sir or madam
I wanted to alert you to one of the biggest disservices to Ethiopia being carried out, not by our imaginary enemies, or other radical groups but by so called Ethiopian tourism professionals, I was a guest visitor to the recent London travel market 2005, and sadly the Ethiopian stand was a big disgrace, we recently were told that the tourism budget for the tourism commission had been increased by 25% to further increase the tourism revenue and promotion, but one cannot tell from visiting this event or the Ethiopian stand.
The Ethiopia stand was tucked away in a dimly lit corner, sporting very unprofessionally designed posters with the same old bare breasted girls taken during the 1960s on the wall, badly lit graphics and some tacky pieces of Ethiopian traditional cloth tied to the poles, and then to make matters worse, it was empty! the people who were supposed to be there selling Ethiopia to tour operators who had come looking for business, were never at their pathetic looking tables and the two at most who were there were only interested in playing with their Mobile phones, you ask them for any information even the simplest question, and they point you to a poorly printed brochure that looks like the paper it is printed on has been recycled 100 times and say “ you can see this “
Speaking English seemed to be the furthest thing on their minds and they looked visibly uncomfortable when asked any questions about Ethiopia, almost afraid to tell you any thing! so my question is WHY ARE THEY THERE? is this the message we what to send to invite tourist to Ethiopia?,
In contrast, the Kenyan Pavillion right next door to the empty Ethiopian "table stand" was huge over 100 sm meters stage with a fantastic lagoons and designed like a safari camp, they had almost 60 staff literally stopping you as you went by as asking you “have you been to Kenya” or “come to Kenya” and my Ethiopian friends who were there to promotoe Ethiopia from:
Adika Tour & Travel
Ethiopian Airlines
Ghion Hotels Enterprise
Gize Travel and Tours
Green Land Tours
Hilton Addis Ababa
Jacaranda Tours
Kibran Tour and Travel
Red Jackal Tour Operator
Sunrise Travel & Tours
Village Ethiopia
World Travel & Tours
Yumo Tours
even the great Ethiopian Airlines had a table empty 90% of the time!, sitting across [or not even sitting there as was the case on many a time was ] from the Kenyan pavilion just looked on at the brisk trade being done on the Kenyan and surrounding stands, wondering what on earth they were doing there, they all looked totally lost and out of their dept, and for a moment or two I felt sorry for them, be then again I was not, I was very angry with them! they have been coming to this show for many years and never seem learn anything new, they still bring the same old boring set of ideas and have the same lazy attitude towards marketing Ethiopia and IT IS NOT WORKING!!!, this is the reason why so many tourist go to Kenya, and the saddest thing is they all have to fly over Ethiopia to get there.
If we are not prepared to going to tout for tourist, they will not come to Ethiopia lets not fool our selves. The Global Tourism sector is worth over $460billion! And how much is Ethiopia getting out of it ? Peanuts instead of telling the truth we are told that 200 000 tourist came to Ethiopia last year, excuse me for asking but which hotels did they stay in? The Sheraton and Hilton hotels with less than 800 room between them or the 6-12 room rabbit huts calling them selves hotels in the pisaa Area for 40 birr a night? The reality is that of the numberse quitd ever year 70% are EAL transit passengers going to other destinantions, 20% Ethiopians living aborad visiting relatives 8% on conferences and maybe only 2% on real tourism visits, yet we pat ourselves on the back for a terrible job and thing we are fooling the world? wea re onle fooling each other.
Even small Saint Lucia, Barbados, Turks and Caicos caribbeban Islands with a population of only 12,500 people had much bigger and better stands than Ethiopia and they are halfway around the World in the middle of the ocean! but they see the importance of promoting Tourism properly,
I suggest that all untrained tour operators from Ethiopia should be banned from attending these International shows if they are only going to go out and embarrass us and are not serious about the job they are sent to do, and instead we should hire "Professional marketing executives" or agencies to do the job for us, it will be cheaper and more profitable, and at lease we are guaranteed that they will do a professional job of promoting Ethiopia
So I must ask When will we change our game plan and do things like the rest of the world with the new Ethiopian millennium fast approaching this is a unique opportunity to promote Ethiopia but some of my friend don’t even know how to do the simplest of marketing, and I ask the final question: Where is all the money applied to the Tourism promotion budget going? Certainly not on “promoting” Ethiopian tourism? From the shamefull exhibition that Ethiopia put on last week
I Thank for your time
Linda Williams
Linda Wiliams is a free Lance Journalist living in Sweden and I am married to an Ethiopian for 12 years
 Ethiopian Stand still empty |
 Gambia stand ready to do business |
 Hellp Ethiopian anybody home |
 Our Ethiopian stand boring |
 Perus stand makes you want |
 Saint Lucia |
 The Kenyan stand a behive organization |
 The queue for Japan |
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