When a country fails to come up with a shared resolution with its citizens, the proximity of challenges would reach at its climax leading to public violence enduring the political legitimacy of that country from outside and inside of its political system. Similarly, when a country is in a state of trouble, visitors tend to avoid visiting the politically disturbed provinces and districts of that country; and/or the country itself. This could affect the socioeconomic and safety and security of that conflict-affected region or country. Political conflict has for long been known to deter tourism development of a particular society or nation. Bahir Dar, one of the known tourist destinations of Ethiopia, went through repeated turbulent conflicts. Considering this, the objectives of this study were to understand the causes of the 2016 political conflict and analyze its effects on big and small-scale tourism stakeholders; and on the entire development of the tourism sector in Bahir Dar. A qualitative approach was used and data were gathered through in-depth interview, focus group discussion and observation. These collected data were transcribed from Amharic to English, analyzed thematically and organized through systematic interpretation. In the analysis part, the psychosocial effects were presented using cases from indepth interview respondents. The finding of this research revealed that the major causes for the advent of the political conflict in Bahir Dar were issues related to corruption, political affiliation, political hegemony, nationwide ethnic tension, socioeconomic exclusion and a quest to re-gain an Amhara land and identity among the Wolkayit Amhara community. The finding results also showed the advent of the political conflict affected the entire tourism business of Bahir Dar and its nearby tourist destinations. Among these effects were safety and security and; socioeconomic effects which brought psychosocial disfunctions endangering the physical, psychological and financial safety of the tourism sector and its stakeholders in the research area. The physical insecurity/threat/ embraced threats/insecurities of tourism business owners and their properties which included killing, arrest, detention, harassment, and intimidation of tourism beneficiary individuals in one hand; and attacks on hotels on the other. While, the psychological effect of the political conflict included psychological distresses such as stress, animosity, character assassination and post thrombotic stress disorder. The other effect that the political conflict brought unto the tourism development of the research area was financial problems on the entire development of the tourism sector in the research area. Keywords: political conflict, tourism, safety and security, socioeconomic