People move to different destinations for different purposes. Their choice of a given tourism destination partly depends on the information they have about it. Addis Ababa is one of the tourist destinations in Ethiopia with a lots of tourism potential. This study assessed the tourist sites that the mass media promote, their influence on tourists, and the challenges the mass media faced in promoting the tourist sites. A cross-sectional descriptive research design was applied. Both qualitative and quantitative (mixed) approaches were used. Both primary and secondary sources were used. 384 tourists by convenience sampling from the selected tourist sites in Addis Ababa and six key informants by purposive sampling from mass media, the Addis Ababa tourism bureau, and the tourism minister participated in this study. The study found that Entoto Park is a highly promoted tourist site in Addis Ababa in the mass media. However, the Holy Trinity Cathedral is the one that is not given that much attention in the mass media. In addition, the study found mass media promotion of tourist sites had an influence on tourists' decisions to visit the sites and to frequently talk about the promoted sites and to some extent to develop business relationships with the sites and carry out research on them. Mass media was the major source of information for people who were visiting the selected tourist sites in Addis Ababa. The study also found that mass media face many challenges among which sponsorship is the major one. This is due to a shortage of support from the concerned stakeholders such as the Minister of Tourism. As Ethiopia makes tourism a pillar of development, the minister has to give support to the mass media.