"Coffee!" was the resounding answer when Ethiopia Tourism asked a group of journalists the first thing that Ethiopia brought to mind. About a dozen trade media gathered for a light breakfast in the basement bar of the trendy Drake Hotel, in Toronto's hipster Queen West area. Under a slew of disco balls, we heard how Ethiopia was growing its tourism industry.
Personally, I couldn't help but recall the harrowing images of starving Ethiopian children from the drought in the 1980s. I asked Solomon Tadesse, CEO of the Ethiopian Tourism Organization, if that's still the impression people have of the country.
"Changing that image was very challenging," he said. "Western media didn't portray the whole story of the country. It gives the wrong impression." Since the famine, now decades ago, he said government policy has changed "to take care of people first," and they're now better prepared. "We may still have droughts, but we're handling it."
Those policies likely helped them become a Lonely Planet Top Ten Destination of 2017. First, they focused on improving health and education (it used to be "13 percent of kids in school, now it's 97 percent"), along with roads, potable water, and their communications network. That allowed them to start making tourism a priority, forming three new tourism organizations, and to send this first tourism delegation to North America, visiting New York, LA, and Toronto.
The Ethiopian Tourism Organization, formed in 2014, has recently inked an agreement with New York-based CornerSun, who will represent and promote the destination to travel trade and media throughout the United States and Canada.
They're actively looking for partners to develop tourist activities like hot air ballooning, safaris, and mountain biking, but there's already a range of tourist attractions, drawing a largely European crowd. A big favorite is a climbable volcano that includes the world's oldest permanent lava lake, along with marathons, and birding. Ethiopia also has its own calendar, so visitors are immediately "eight years younger," and exit polls indicate people love the food. Ethiopian bread is naturally gluten free (when made of teff flour), and during the 40-day Nativity Fast, "it's heaven for vegetarians."
The country is dubbing itself the "Land of Origins." In addition to being the birthplace of coffee, this is the home of the hominoid skeleton "Lucy," making it the "cradle of humanity," and it's the source of the Blue Nile. Also, Ethiopia has never been colonized.
"What you see in Ethiopia is Ethiopian," he said. It has a rich history of castles, belonging to kings and emperors, "some strong, some weak," and religious traditions from Christianity to Islam. "Anyone can walk safely, anytime, day or night, man or woman."
"How welcoming is Ethiopia to the gay and lesbian market," one media member asked. It's a serious offense in Ethiopia, but Tadesse said he doesn't know of any tourists being prosecuted, and doesn't think gay visitors would have a problem.
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