Challenges and opportunities of managing festival tourism for sustainable tourism development: The case of the Ashendye Festival, North Wollo, Ethiopia

Ashendye festival is one of the most famous festivals, which is celebrated in the northern parts of Ethiopia and specifically in Lalibela and its surrounding areas. Since Ashendye s intangible cultural heritage is the ancient festivals of the destination and can provide a lot of value for the local communities, government, and tourism industries, the study is considered to be worthwhile. The objectives of this study were to investigate the challenges and opportunities of Ashendye festival for sustainable tourism development. The target populations were the religious fathers, tourism and culture experts, local guides, tourist information center, souvenirs shops and local community of the destination. A descriptive research design was employed. Non probability sampling was employed to obtain the right respondents. Thus, 25 respondents were chosen through purposely sampling techniques. Findings showed that the many challenges of globalization and commodification, issues of poor funding, issues of infrastructures, lack of commitment for conserving heritage materials, and a lack of awareness were the current management issues plaguing the festival. The opportunities deriving from it were job opportunities, environmental conservation aspects, for ancient festivals, religious values, the further wide spreading of tourism and related occupations all leading to suatainability. These findings showed that the all responsible bodies need to be involved and integrated to solve the management issues and to give attention for the values that the festival is endowed with for cultural tourism development and its sustainability.