Nurhssen S
Tourism is an ever expanding service industry with latent vast growth potential and has, therefore, become one of the largest and dynamically developing sectors of nations. Its capacity to generate employment both directly and indirectly, its potential to earn foreign currency for the host community, its high growth and development rates, infrastructure development, introduction of new management and educational experience, have made this industry greatly desirable for all. The outcome of increasing tourism has been found to be a critical and crucial catalyst in accelerating the rate of socio-economic development. Therefore, the study entitled the role of tourism to local economic development of Gondar city in terms of income receipt, job opportunity expansion and investment attraction was undertaken. To scrutinize the role of the sector in the city, the study used 150 samples randomly those are directly impacted by the tourism sector. In order to gather the necessary data from the sample those directly impacted by the tourism sector, questionnaire and interview were used as research instrument tools. In light of this, descriptive statistics was employed to analyze the data obtained through questionnaire. The study finding indicates that tourism sector is crucial armed force in fighting and reducing the extent and intensity of poverty in general. Besides, the society`s livelihoods were improved significantly. More specifically, the employment of those who joined the sector as government employee has increased from 2000 employees in 2011 and increases to 4800 in 2015 and the number of employees engaged in hotels, restaurants, pensions, lodges etc. revealed that there are about 5500 persons employed excluding other indirect employees and the income level increased from birr 80,000 and birr 300,000 in 2007 to birr 1,230,000 and 7,768,019 in 2015 from domestic and foreign tourists respectively.
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