1 Project Description:- Special bus services to tourists is a form of transporting tourists form one tourist site to another say from Gondar to Lalibela or from Bahir Dar to Gondar. The transport service will have special buses with ventilators, television sets, toilet facilities and a small supply of snacks and drinks. It will have one or two hostesses or hosts who will serve, guide and inform tourists about places they pass through.
2 Rationale:- In addition to identified tourists sites, many tourists like to see the countryside. They want a to see ordinary places and ordinary people of the countries they visit. As a result in addition to special tourists sites, these tourists want to ‘get a feel” of other places within a country. To do so, they need to travel by ordinary buses, trains or special buses. In most countries which have highly developed tourism industry, tourists are provided with special buses with special facilities. These buses operate with travel schedules convenient to tourists and they usually shuttle between major tourist sites or tourist destinations. As mentioned above, the buses are equipped with facilities required for comfortable surface travel. With some rare exception in Addis Ababa, special bus services are not provided to tourists in the country. The only means of transport for almost all tourists in the country is are transport. Many tourists land in Addis Ababa: travel by air to Bahir Dar; stay there for one or two days, fly to Gondar and stay for a day and take a flight to Axum or Lalibilla, spend overnight and fly back to Addis and then to another country or home. If there were special bus services for tourists, they could travel from Addis to the other tourist sites taking more days in our country and spending more. The tourists will see more about us and we will get more of their money.
3 Market Potential:-The major tourist destinations in the country up to now are the northwestern and northern part of the country. At the current stage of tourism development in the coronary, between 100,000 and 150,000 tourists visit the country every year. Among these tourists probably 25 to 40 percent will prefer to travel by special buses to their destinations i.e tourist sites. This will be sufficient to make a special bus services enterprise a financially viable business entity.
4 Major Inputs:-Well trained bus conductors and hostesses, buses equipped with all the necessary facilities as mentioned above, tents and mobile toilet facilities (if possible).
5 Estimated Investment:- For the first one or two years, one special bus could be sufficient. For this and for other minor capital items, the following investment will be required.
§ Spicily Bus 1,200,000
§ Other Facilities 100,000
§ Working capital 80,000
1,380,000
6 Benefits:- Will give tourist alternative means of transport which increases their satisfactory about their stay in the country, will make tourists stay more in Ethiopia and spend more in Ethiopia .
7 Location:- Bahir Dar as head office with branches in Addis Ababa and other tourist destinations.