When I lived in Europe most of the people there went to Tunisia for holiday and found it to be extremely inexpensive and affordable. A few people also went to Morocco and said the same thing. I've never been too keen on going anywhere in Africa, but decided awhile back to look at Ethiopia. When I started pricing tours I found the packages to be way way way out of range. The accomodations aren't even multi-star! Any idea why travel to Ethiopia would be so dear ?
No clue.. Ethiopia stands out between the rest of the African countries because it hardly has a history of being colonized, so maybe they just charge a lot of money for 'invaders? Nah, just kidding.. I really don't know. Their economy is agriculture-based, the life expectancy at birth is pretty low (±48 years), 50% lived below the poverty line in 2004.. so you'd say they could use tourists to bring in some money. Maybe they are just trying to get all the tourists' money? If you need more general info like this, check http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/et.html
Why would you want multistar accomodations if you really want to experience Ethiopa first hand. I mean what kind of empoverished third world country has multistar accomodations anyway? In fact the biggest industry, by far, in many African countries is tourism. But to answer your question: I spent a month in Kenya and Tanzania in 97, it was a relatively expensive trip even though we stayed in tents about half of it and rustic yet pleasant camps and lodges the other times. All of the nicer accomodations were less than $20 USD/night. So why was it expensive? Well our trip revolved around touring the countries in land rovers and the prices of gas in these lesser developed countries was about eight times the price of gas in the US at that time. So the biggest expense for us, for the trip, was gas.
