Prioritising Tourism

According to the United Nation’s World Tourism Organisation, in 2013, there were 1.087 billion international tourist arrivals worldwide, with a growth of 5.0% as compared to 1.03 billion in 2012. The top five international tourism destinations were: France, United States, Spain, China, and Italy.  During the same period, there were over 55.7 million international tourist arrivals to Africa, an increase of 5.4% over 2012. And the top the top ten African destinations were: Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, Algeria, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda, Swaziland and Tanzania. In fact, international tourism receipts grew to US$1.07 trillion (€837 billion) in 2012, corresponding to an increase in real terms of 4.0% from 2011.

Travel & Tourism is no doubt one of the world’s largest industries. The sector which was identified by the Chief Olusegun Obasanjo’s regime in 2005 as one of the six priority areas for development still remains insignificant in terms of contribution to Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The 2013 report of the World Economic Forum (WEF), ranked Nigeria ranked 127th in the world and 22nd in the sub-Sahara Africa region. This position though a slight improvement since the last assessment, several issues continue to withhold the sector from unleashing its potentials.  

According to the WEF report, the country’s safety and security is among the poorest in the world (136th), as are health and hygiene levels (133th). Infrastructure require significant upgrading, especially ground transport (119th) and tourism infrastructure (103rd). Additionally, policy rules and regulation are not sufficiently supportive of the development of the sector, with insufficiently protected property rights (116th), significant costs and time needed to start a business, and extensive visa requirements (126th). Moreover, Nigeria suffers from a lack of price competitiveness, particularly by regional standards, with very high ticket taxes and charges and hotel prices. And, the T&T sector is not seen a high priority for the country (133th), which may make efforts across these many areas all the more difficult. The shameful aspect of this performance is that several African countries with less resource compared to Nigeria were ranked far well.

There is no doubt that Nigeria has important natural resources that could be leveraged to develop its tourism industry, the products requires development and packaging. The current marketing of Nigeria is inadequate; the tourism sector lacks reliable statistics and market information; current marketing activities are under-funded, inadequate and ineffective; and the tourist products are not organized or packaged for the market place. Furthermore, Nigeria’s tourist attractions are unknown to the international travel trade and the image of Nigeria abroad is still very negative and is not being adequately addressed.

Singapore, Hong Kong, and New Zealand retain the top three ranks in the policy rules and regulations pillar, because these countries have the most conducive overarching policy environments for the development of the tourism sector which Nigeria can emulate. 

There is a need for the Federal Ministry for Culture and Tourism to be strengthened so that it will be able to perform its role in securing the necessary investment, target setting and monitoring. Also, domestic tourist operators should focus more on innovating tourist products and enhancing services quality, as well as making their products and services known abroad. In addition, if Nigeria really desires to make tourism one of the priority sectors for transformation of the Nigerian economy, greater efforts will have be made to improve infrastructure, regulatory framework and public services in order to foster local tourism industry.