Understanding the Tourist Experience in Ethiopia

Salzburg UoAS IMT Master Program | Aysheshim Tiruneh Alemu

Understand the Tourist Experience in Ethiopia:

Master Thesis

A Travel Blog Based Evaluation

IMT-E M2010Author: Aysheshim Tiruneh, B.A

# 1010649040[atiruneh.imte-m2010@fh salzburg.ac.at]

Supervised by Prof. Roman Egger (Phd.)

June 2012


Structure Chapter 1. Introduction Chapter 2. Methodology Chapter 3. Literature

Review Chapter 4. Results Chapter 5. Discussion Chapter 6. Conclusion Chapter 7. Reflection


Research Purpose

Evaluating tourists’ experience in Ethiopia › Based on visitors opinion posted on travel

blogs. Provide managerial implication to

monitor tourist experience › Based on the result evaluated


Argumentation

Experience as a competition strategy› (Gilmore & Pine 2007; Andersson 2007; Oh, Fiore & Jeoung

2007; Tung & Ritchie, 2011; Dalton et al. 2009) › Volo (2009, proved the way out

› Though it is expensive, it is valued(Binkhorst 2009) experience as a marketing motto

› What is experience in tourism all about?› (Ooi 2003)…found out it is difficult › And Volo (2009)…. Tourism is market place of experience› Andersson (2007) …..providing input for experience


Argumentation Continued

How?› Gilmore and Pine (2007)….”. ….being real,

original, genuine, sincere, and authentic”› …. staging meaningful experiences

(Tarssanen 2009). › But, experience designers ……intuition,

on copying best practices w/c is a problem and tourists are not included (Binkhorst

2009).


Here comes my argumentation

if we know as we have to consider tourist as a partner in the experience design process › Why not identifying factors that determine

tourist experience …………..› Identifying those factors has been tried in

the service industry (Magnini 2011), though it was just positive aspect

› And in Holiday experience (Kim et al. 2010)


Research Questions

What factors determine the experience (type: meaning negative or positive) that tourist encounter in Ethiopia?

› What experience are tourist communicating about their visit to Ethiopia?

› What measures must Ethiopian DMOs consider to provide and maximize tourists’ experience?


Methodology

Unobstructive methodology is chosen to answer the research question › Allan and Emma (2003)…extensively used

by historians than business fields› traditional research methodologies

depend On protocol dictated by the researcher’s

objectives (Volo 2009)


Data Collection Sampling

› purposive sampling is taken which means Datum are selected because of some

characteristic (Patton 1990) used the term “Travel Blog” Brin and Page (1998)…Google’s PageRank

algorithm ranks documents based on popularity

January 26…www.travelblog.org is selected About Ethiopia 1015 found and downloaded

in to word file


Analysation

travel blogs which are spam (commercial, personal description, etc) will be eliminated

Pictures and their description will not be part of the Analysation

Only travel blogs that has something with research question will be analyzed

Content will be grouped in to themes to answer the research question,

Content analysis and word Frequency will be used with the help of Nvivo version 9


Literature TRAVEL BLOGS AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR

DESTINATION MARKETING (Bing et al. 2007)

Development of a Scale to Measure Memorable Tourism Experiences (Kim et al. 2010)

Bloggers’ reported tourist experiences: Their utility as a tourism data source and their effect on prospective tourists (Volo 2010)


Possible Results

Positive and Negative tourist experience in Ethiopia

Factors that determine tourists experience will be identified

Constructive managerial implication to DMOs of Ethiopia will be provided

Education

Understanding the Tourist Experience in Ethiopia