Underutilization of Cultural Heritages for Tourism Due to Poor Entrance Fee Determination Based on the Travel Cost Framework

Abstract

Tourism is one of the world’s fastest growing industries and is one of the largest industries in the world. Cultural tourism is often argued to be one of the most important and rapidly growing areas of global tourism. Ethiopia, a country in East Africa can be expressed as a mosaic of people and cultures, encyclopedia of geology, the cradle of humankind and civilization. The natural and interesting landscape, endowed with rich biodiversity, socked in history, culturally hospitable, traditionally sensitive, and intrinsically religious people put together Ethiopia a tourist paradise though the entrance fee, the value and other characteristics of these heritage resources are left unaddressed. The study uses the Individual Travel Cost Method to estimate the use value of RHCL. The truncated negative binomial method (TNBM) was employed to derive the demand function for use value of RHCL. The result of the study showed that the potential annual use value of the RHCL was estimated to be 759,687,113 ETB per annum[1]. Furthermore; the entrance fee that would maximize the use value of the church is 11.32 US Dollars  per four days. which has a significant difference from the existing entrance fee(50 US Dollars per four days) . Future researches are recommended.

Keywords: Individual travel cost method; cultural Heritage; economic value

[1]1 US Dollar=19.3469 of Ethiopian Birr(ETB) while the study is conducted