**5. Conclusion**

The current study has found that the inbound tourism market to Sidama is an undeviating reflection of Ethiopia's international tourism industry in terms of nationality and other demographic indicators. Except for length of stay, the variables of gender, age, and level of education conform to what the wider literature of cultural tourism depicts about tourists. Regarding marketability, the findings uncovered that most of cultural tourism products of Sidama exist at low level of market readiness. The few exceptions in this regard include *fiche cambalala* festival, Hanafa cultural tourist village, and *enset* brushing ceremonies. As far typology of tourists is concerned, cultural tourist flow to Sidama is largely characterized by holidaymakers to whom cultural tourism plays no role in their visitation decision making. As an opening inquiry in to marketability of cultural tourism assets in Ethiopia, the study provides significant theoretical and practical implications. From theoretical

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**Author details**

Amare Yaekob Chiriko

provided the original work is properly cited.

MA in Tourism and Development, Hawassa University, Hawassa, Ethiopia

\*Address all correspondence to: kuku.keku@gmail.com; amareya@hu.edu.et

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*Marketing Cultural Resources as a Tourism Product DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93869*

marketing in Sidama and Ethiopia at large.

study through its NORAD (HU-NIMBU-IV) project.

**Acknowledgements**

resources of Sidama, Ethiopia".

**Notes**

point of view it analyses cultural tourism assets and their marketability as a tourism commodity in a developing destination context. Practically, study findings offer helpful inputs to governments and destination marketing practitioners in Sidama to make the cultural tourism resources of the area market-ready and learn profiles of tourists consuming them. Academia and future researchers especially in tourism, marketing and anthropology disciplines are encouraged to undertake thorough analysis into cultural tourism through, for example, segmentation of tourists, typologies of cultural tourism products; level of efforts exerted in product development and

The author would like to thank Hawassa University, Ethiopia for funding this

This book chapter is a modified version of an article published in *African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure (2020), Volume 9, Issue 1* as "Assessing the marketability of cultural resources as a tourism product: a case of cultural tourism

*Marketing Cultural Resources as a Tourism Product DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93869*

point of view it analyses cultural tourism assets and their marketability as a tourism commodity in a developing destination context. Practically, study findings offer helpful inputs to governments and destination marketing practitioners in Sidama to make the cultural tourism resources of the area market-ready and learn profiles of tourists consuming them. Academia and future researchers especially in tourism, marketing and anthropology disciplines are encouraged to undertake thorough analysis into cultural tourism through, for example, segmentation of tourists, typologies of cultural tourism products; level of efforts exerted in product development and marketing in Sidama and Ethiopia at large.
