| Summary: | Cultural resources are any cultural features, tangible or intangible available within a country, region or area, that could give tourists an incentive to undertake cultural tourism activities. To be consumed by tourists, cultural endowments of a certain area need to be turned to a developed and marketed commodity. Though Sidama, a zone in Southern Ethiopia, possesses ample cultural tourism resources, their marketability as a product has not been studied via academic enquiry. This study was conducted to fill the gap apparent in this regard. Its objectives were to assess the market-readiness of cultural tourism resources of Sidama; and to identify the profiles of cultural tourists consuming the resources. Regarding methodology, a descriptive study design involving survey-based quantitative research approach has been employed for empirical investigation. Data were collected from 302 international tourists through a survey questionnaire using convenient sampling. Findings from the study uncovered that, except for fiche cambala, Hanafa cultural tourist village, and enset brushing, the majority of cultural tourism products of Sidama are at lower market readiness stage. Furthermore, cultural tourist inflow to the area is largely characterised by holidaymakers to whom cultural tourism plays no role in their visitation decision making. The study provides significant theoretical and practical implications. Theoretically, it offers analysis of cultural tourism assets and their marketability as a tourism commodity in a developing destination context; in a practical context, it puts forward helpful inputs to governments and destination marketing practitioners in Sidama to make the nation’s cultural tourism resources market-ready and assess profiles of tourists consuming them.
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