International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 9, Issue 5, May 2019 334 ISSN 2250-3153 Unexplored Natural Tourism Potentials: Gambella People’s National Regional State, South West Ethiopia Selemon Thomas Fakana1,* and Alemken Berihun Mengist1, ** 1 Department of Wildlife and Ecotourism Management, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Gambella University, P. O. Box 126, Gambella, Ethiopia In Collaboration with Gambella Tourism Organization * First Author and Corresponding Author: E-mail:
[email protected] **Second Author DOI: 10.29322/IJSRP.9.05.2019.p8940 http://dx.doi.org/10.29322/IJSRP.9.05.2019.p8940 Abstract - Tourism is travel for recreation, leisure, education and training, visiting friends and relatives, shopping, transit, pilgrimages or business purposes and staying in places outside their usual environment for not less than 24 hours and not more than one consecutive year. The tourism industry is made up attraction sector, accommodation sector and transport sector. Ethiopia embraces enormous natural tourism potentials with its unique biodiversity, spectacular landscapes, lakes, waterfalls, rivers, mountains, cliffs, natural bridges, valleys, protected areas and biosphere reserves. Gambella Region is located at south west of Ethiopia and endowed with remarkable natural tourism destinations. Nonetheless, limited study has conducted in exploring natural tourism potentials. Henceforth, the current study addresses the stated issue. To do so, key informants from three zones (n=15), five regional offices (n=23) and 13 woredas (n=65) has purposively selected based on the set criteria. Altogether, 103 key informants were interviewed besides to field observation. Collected raw data were chosen, refined, categorized, edited, evaluated, coded and entered to SPSS software version 20.