Tourism has over the years showcased its huge capacity in the area of job creation and human capital development, yet it’s often undervalued. Survey reliably reveals that tourism presently provides about 15 percent of the entire world’s jobs.
In spite of the above revelation, it’s appalling that the tourism sector of most countries across the global community, particularly on the African continent, is currently moribund or forgotten.
It’s noteworthy that observing a beautifully-looking environment remains one of the prime desires of every sane being. This is the reason every able-bodied man works assiduously to ensure that his or her immediate surroundings appear enticingly.
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Tourism as an area of life or human endeavour is a sector that has over the decades pays an optimum attention to how attractive our surroundings look. This makes the area globally recognized.
Concisely, tourism is the business activity connected with provision of accommodation, entertainment, and other hospitable services for people who are visiting a place for pleasure. In other words, a tourist can be described as a person who is traveling or visiting a certain locality for the sake of pleasure.
Tourism has been proven to be an outstanding industry that can guarantee absolute relaxation for mankind irrespective of background. This implies that no one is exempted when it calls for the essence of tourism among mankind.
In the past, our various heritages were being used by our ancestors as a means of entertaining themselves, and their guests. Presently, the tourism industry has shown that these endowments can equally be utilized as business ventures by upgrading them to international standard.
Noting the positive impact of the tourism industry the world over, it is of no need reiterating that it has contributed massively to the socio-economic development of most nations in existence. Analysts are of the view that the industry currently represents about eleven (11%) of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and that it is a key revenue sector for developing and emerging economies.
Indeed, tourism plays a very vital role in building blocks of a more sustainable future for all, which is community development. Above all, it is widely acknowledged for its capacity to respond to global challenges. In view of this, there is an urgent need for Nigeria and the likes to follow suit to ensure that the world tourism industry that helps to foster global unity and complete rest of mind is granted preferential treatment at all cost.
Nigeria can encourage the commendable crusade by ensuring that her countless socio-cultural resources are optimally rejuvenated. This proposed measure would not only help to encourage the world tourism industry, but would go a long way to elevate the country’s Gross National Product (GNP), thus strengthening her ongoing sagging economy.
More so, as the world is fast embracing technology and its numerous benefits, it’s imperative for the concerned authorities to consider how to aptly deploy tech measures towards harnessing and showcasing the country’s countless tourism potentials.
To actualize this, we need to first acknowledge the impact of tech on our various activities. Then, we can proceed in engaging capable hands that truly understand the nitty-gritty of the said tool with a view to inculcating it into the sector in question.
Hence, the cognoscenti must be well consulted for the way forward. Also, we must reconsider the country’s policy direction in the area of tourism to ensure that tech measures are duly enshrined therein.
Nigeria as an independent state is made up of over two hundred and fifty ethnic groups, and each of these groups is tremendously blessed with various socio-cultural endowments. These cultural resources including dancing, masquerading, dressing, hunting, fishing, wrestling, and molding of sculptures, just to mention but a few, if well harnessed, would definitely help to revive the nation’s tourism sector, thereby boosting her socio-economic ego.
It’s worth noting that the timing of the World Tourism Day is appropriate, because it comes at the end of the high season in the Northern hemisphere and at the beginning of the season in the Southern hemisphere, when tourism is of topical interest to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
The UN Conference on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) held in 2012 emphasized that well-designed and appropriately managed tourism can make a significant contribution to the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development.
The then Secretary General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon further highlighted that tourism, which remained one of the world’s largest economic sectors, was specially well-placed to promote environmental sustainability, green-growth, and human struggle against climate change through its relationship with energy.
Ever since its inception, the World Tourism Day has been celebrated to foster awareness among the global community on the essence of tourism and its social, cultural, political and economic value. The celebration seeks to highlight tourism potential as regards promotion of the SDGs, as well as how it addresses some of the most pressing challenges the global society is currently faced with.
So, as Nigeria joins the rest of the world to celebrate the remarkable day, we are all expected to contribute our quota toward ensuring that our respective environments or surroundings become globally recognized as attractive and human friendly localities, so that, generations yet unborn would live to remember that an attractive environment is a society we all yearn for.
The truth remains that everywhere in Nigeria bears tourism potentials, thus all that is required of the government, among other concerned stakeholders, is to swing into action headlong with the sole aim of doing the needful.
The authorities are, therefore, encouraged to revisit the existing policies guiding the country’s tourism sector with a view to making amends where need be. Apt policy formulation and implementation as well as formidable maintenance culture are other inevitable factors.
It’s high time we quit retrogressive debates and discussions regarding tourism towards focusing solely on progressive ones. Mind you, the goal cannot be aptly and holistically actualized if we continue to jettison tech value.
The tourism sector has strongly proven to possess enormous and formidable economic potentials, hence countries that are still lagging behind such as Nigeria, have to earnestly key into the moving train.