Nigerian Travel Week: Stakeholders call for PPP in promoting domestic tourism

Travel and tourism stakeholders have called on the government of Nigeria to join force with the private sector to practically develop and promote domestic tourism in the country.

This call was made at the maiden edition of the Nigeria Travel Week, a multisession travel and tourism event held in selected tourism spots and centers in Lagos.

The Nigerian Travel Week travel roundtable held at The Wheatbaker Hotel, Ikoyi, featured two panel discussions with the first session themed: Leveraging tourism for vibrant and sustainable development and the second on: National carrier and tourism development: Costs versus benefit. Coordinated by the publisher of Inside Watch Africa (IWA), Oluwaseyi Adegoke – Adeyemo, the first panel discussants were: Efe Awhana, Waturi Matu, Didier Bateye of Sun International Hotel, Mrs. Abiola Ogunbiyi of SJ Tours, Abiola Lawal of Flyboku.com and Ademola Sanya of British Airways.

Speaking during the discussion, Watu, a former co-ordinator of East African Tourism Platform (EATP) urged Nigerians to look inward by developing and promoting domestic tourism, which should serve as a springboard to developing its inbound tourism.

She called for the creation of a structured and formalised mode of communication and dialogue between the public and private sectors as that is the quickest and easiest way to bring about development in the industry rather than each working alone.

Watu called for identifying the tourism assets, taking inventory of them and building on them to make them attractive even as she insisted that ‘‘We must consume and exhaust our resources in our country and continent. The government must be involved in this.’’

On his part, Bateye drew attention to ignorance among Africans of what exist within the continent and the lack of commitment to tourism by both the government and the people. To get Nigeria or African tourism on the winning way, he said all these must be gotten rid of and that Africans must learn to explore and develop Africa first.

For Mrs. Ogunbiyi, the task of building Nigeria tourism is solely that of the Nigerians and the government, disclosing that there exist enough laws and policies for the growth of the industry and that an enabling environment already exists but that what is missing in the space is the Nigerian people.

Sanya spoke of having a synergy between tourism and aviation and the economic benefits of both when fully developed. His advice is for the country to be made welcoming and that the individual has a greater role to play in this regard by ensuring that their spaces are made welcoming to visitors even as he emphasised on the concept of working from inside to the outside, by that, he said focus should be on domestic tourism.

Lawal dwell on the need to make tourism contribute immensely to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country, as he said that the present 4 per cent contribution of tourism is not acceptable. Therefore, he said effort should be made to open up tourism and develop the value chain even as he drew attention to the unique Nigeria environment and amazing Nigerian people.

Awhana shared with the audience the underlining factor that gave birth to NTW: ‘‘My major underlining reason was my passion for domestic tourism. I saw the beauty that we have in our country. People actually also appreciate these things. There is nothing special or unique that we don’t have as a people and as a country.

‘‘What we don’t have is the confidence in our tourism assets. We need to tell our story ourselves. Therefore, we need to change the narrative about Nigeria and that is what this event is about.

“The industry needs to come together, and synergised as one. We also need to start making positive noise about ourselves and then attract the government to what we are doing as a private sector.’’