Ecolodges Promotion in Egypt: Assessing the Status Quo

Abstract

Egypt has different ecotourism sites, but, it not being branded as ecotourism destination due to lack of promotional efforts to disseminate the ecotourism attractions and ecolodges in Egypt to international tourists. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to identify the current state of ecolodges promotion in Tunis village. A qualitative research approach was adopted in this research to analyse the promotion of the ecolodges in Tunis village in Fayoum governorate. Population of this research consists of all ecolodge in Tunis village (n=12). Total survey method has been chosen to represent the defined population. In this research qualitative data collection methods was included semi-structured interviews with ecolodge managers (n=12) and sales and marketing managers (n=7). The data have been analyzed by descriptive statistics instruments such as frequency distribution and diagrams. The hypotheses have also been tested one by one by the T-test and SPSS software version 24. The results showed that the ecolodges didn’t have marketing or promotional plan, which considered the most problem facing the ecolodges in Tunis village. The finding found that advertisements and personal selling are the most important promotional tools should be used by ecolodges. The results revealed that the importance of ecolodges promotion including; maximizing economic benefits, raising the standard of living of the local community. It also indicated that ecolodges are very important and a great opportunity to promote tourism in their destination. The results of the current research indicated that major challenge facing ecolodges promotion in Tunis village was; poor clarity of the concept of ecolodges for local community, There is no marketing and sales department in many ecolodges, lack of clear plans for the promotion of ecolodges, exclude of ecolodges in the promotion plans, and tourism companies do not include ecolodges in their tourism programs. The current research contributes to theory through added to the growing literature of ecolodges promotion through its review of the pervious academic research, generation of new ideas and interpretation of rich data collected from the different sources.

Keywords: Ecotourism, Ecolodges, Promotion Tools, Promotion Challenges, Tunis Village

View PDF