Today we are going to talk about the Hospitality and Tourism industry in Nigeria. First of all, we all know Hospitality is the friendly reception and entertainment of guests and visitors and Tourism is travelling for pleasure. I'm not going to bore you with the History of Hospitality and Tourism.
Hospitality and Tourism
The Hospitality and Tourism industry is often viewed as a multi billionaire industry, it's an industry that seems to be doing well all around the world.
Most developed countries tend to focus more on Tourism these days because it's very lucrative sector. It's seen as a sector that would enable the creation for room for foreign investments.
Let's take a look at an African country, let's say South Africa, for instance, it has great sceneries that attract a lot of Nigeria artiste who usually make their music videos over there and not in their own country Nigeria.
It saddens my heart to say that Nigeria being called the giant of Africa isn't living up to its expectations, we are focusing more on oil money and even as crazy as politics to satisfy our pockets and neglecting a gold mine in Tourism.
In Rivers State, Nigeria, we have just a handful of tourists attraction sites such as the Port Harcourt pleasure Park, which seems to be the "IT" thing these days, it's usually crowded due to the lack of other attraction site available and pleasing enough for a visit and post covid-19 era isn't making it any easier,
where individuals are required not to be in crowded environments. We have other attraction sites that have since been neglected such as The Port Harcourt Tourist beach, Port Harcourt zoo with malnourished animals begging to be set free or killed even.
In Nigeria, we are basically only interested in the Hospitality sector with the building of more hotels and motels without considering that we need more tourist attractions sites in order to motivate more travellers both local and international.
In Nigeria, we only travel mostly for business purposes because let's face it 'we are workaholics'. But travelling for business purposes isn't enough to move the hospitality sector forward as we would hope.
Lots of families with the resources tend to travel out for vacation to foreign countries to spend their holidays when such resources could have been spent in Nigeria.
We need more collaboration from both the government and other industries, we need more creative ideas, funding and encouragement through various platforms if we are to improve the Hospitality and Tourism industry in Nigeria.
You don't need to study Hospitality and Tourism management to know that this industry is the next best thing for Nigeria and oil money will not take us anywhere.
In years to come, China would stop the use of Crude oil products for their cars and focus more on renewable energy, same with lots of other countries that are following different paths to better the lives of it's citizens.
I urge Nigerians to see the light through Hospitality and Tourism, if our government isn't ready to do what's needed, then various private bodies should get involved because if we don't act now,
our Nation as a whole in the next 5-10 years would fall into shambles and post covid-19 era is driving us towards that direction if we keep relying on crude oil and it would be too late for us to put the clock back. Nigeria has a lot of untapped potential, and I hope to be one of the individuals to tap into those potentials.
Thanks for your time.
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