STELLA OMONA
Nigerians have been charged to rise up and invest heavily in the tourism industry to change the narrative and boost the nation’s economy.
Specifically, the stakeholders have been charged to look inward as domestic tourismis six times bigger than that of the international.
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Overtime, international tourism has been the attraction, but recent times have shown that domestictourism has more potential than that of the international if properly harnessed.
While international tourismgenerates money for these foreign countries at the detriment of the nation, investing seriously in domestic tourism will boost and strengthen our infrastructure and the purchasing power of the naira.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Daily Independent on the importance of investing in domestic tourism, the Director General of Nigerian Tourism Development Authority (NTDA), Mr, Folorunsho Coker, enumerates the gains and the opportunities of investing in the sector.
He pointed out that tourismremains a leading sector in world trade and one of the fastest growing industries and Nigeria needs to position its tourism to attract investment and partnerships to become a veritable tool to transform its social and economic potentials and thus contribute to its GrossDomestic Product more.
NTDA Boss was certain that developing domestic tourismwill turn around virtually other sectors, which at the same time translates to more financial strength for the industry and the country, adding that the agency under his watch will lay the right foundation for the sector.
He noted that the financial turnaround within Nigeria is six times that of international. He was of the view that if the country gets it right in terms of domestictourism, there would be an inflow than the other way round.
He said: “What is international tourism? It’s a ticket. That’s what makes tourism international. If you have domestic, you have international. The only thing you add to it is the ticket. What does that ticket mean when the airline is not your own? Do you have an airline that’s going to carry them? So literally, that is an exit. That should be an entry for us, and that’s the largest amount of it.
“Two, one hamburger in America is three dollars. In England, it’s about three pounds. One hamburger, N4,509. One dollar is 1,509. In America, one dollar cannot buy you a burger. But in Nigeria, with N1,509, you can enter there and eat. So this ticket that you’re talking about international tourismis an exit. Eight hundred and something million dollars is what we just paid out to international airlines. So you’re talking about international tourism. Understand that’s a dollar exit for you because foreign airlines bring them in. So I’m not very keen on internationals.
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“When you’re talking about what they bring in as well, the dollar, they bring one dollar in to take advantage of my goods and services. Do you understand what I mean by that? In your country, you cannot eat withthis one dollar. In my country, you get so much more value for this one dollar. You can eat with even one Coca-Cola on top of it. So who is winning? So what is international tourism? It’s almost exploitation. So, focus on the Naira to Naira, it is six times bigger.”
He argued that others countries of the world including Dubai that are making it and earning so much from the sector focus on domestic tourism.
“If you go to Dubai, what you enjoy in Dubai is domestic to Dubai. If you go to Saudi Arabia, it’sdomestic. If you go to Kenya, it’s domestic. So let us grow our domestic. Are you waiting for the day that only when Nigeria becomes Dubai you’re going to think of tourism? No, our paths are different. If we throw our own down and re-pick it and rearrange it, we’ll never be exactly the same road as Dubai, but we will have our own success,” he maintained.
Explaining his initiative to promote and sustain tourismsector, Coker said, “In terms of also infrastructure, there are a lot of infrastructure that we have brought into focus. One of them is the brand for Nigeria.
“The second one is Nigerian flavors. If you please go to all the social media handles of the brand, you’ll see our videos, our write-ups. Our website is also there. There are three main platforms. The website, Tour Nigeria, the social handle of all social media platforms and Nigerian flavors. Now our most popular has just been ‘Tour Nigeria’ to experience the flavors of Nigeria.
“So if you go there, you’ll see all the digital work that we have done to put the positive images and tell stories about Nigeria from our people, our resources, our infrastructure, our arts and culture, the very diversity that makes it astonishing that we’re still a unified people. Our food, our sports, our film, our music, our fashion are all things that are tools for growing tourism. Infrastructure that also requires specific.”
The DG, who spoke passionately about growingdomestic Nigerian tourismalso said that his efforts have resulted in the formulation of the national tourism 5-point action plan code-named C-H-I-E-F, meaning CorporateGovernance&Regulations; HumanCapitalDevelopment; InfrastructuralDevelopment; Event&Marketing and Finance&Investment.
“We’ve changed the law, which means that the law is 2022-2023 compliant. And that is huge in terms of the infrastructure requirement for us to also look at issues like double taxation, the regulation.
“Tourism depends on everything. It needs agriculture. It needs manufacturing. It needs police, immigration, customs, telecoms companies, foreign affairs. It needs everybody working in one direction for it to work well. And technology, where it comes in, is that the new human capital requirements of tourism are not just about cooking or how to make a bead,” he stressed.
Another area he drew attention to is that of acquiring digital marketing skills, adding, “We have had Google training. We have had Metal training. We’ve digitized two or three of our departments here. We don’t rush to build buildings that are not sustainable. Sustainability is a key issue I am coming to. We are now in the middle of what I’m sure will sound totally crazy to anybody that reads this. We are now undergoing Standards Organization ofNigeria (SON) training for ISO 9001.
“That is the kind of thing you find at FIRS, CBN. We are in the middle of it now for our staff. We have the same operational standards as Cadbury or any of the big companies, it is an international standard, so we will attain it. In terms of transparency, we also have, we are number eight out of 370-something government agencies on ICPC’s ranking. Our processes are transparent.”
He tasked the media to promote good happenings in Nigeria saying, “All our tourism assets, even some of them as bad as they are, are good enough to be used. And it is in the using what we have now, how they are generating incomes as of now, is that income we will use to change and again feed through.
