As revealed by the research published by Visual Capitalist, there are some countries that are most reliant on Tourism as the mainstay of their economies. Using data sourced from World Travel and Tourism Council, the countries depend on the travel and tourism industry for employment generation and provision of economic powers for their populations.
The Caribbean Island is reported to be receiving up to 20 thousand visitors every day; while Jamaica with population of about three million people has over 30 percent of its total employment working in the travel industry. Again, if there are no steady flow of tourists to the following ten island countries, the probability is very high that they will find themselves in serious economic situation.
The ten island countries are Antigua & Barbuda (with travel and tourism accounting for 91% of total employment in the country), Aruba (84% of total employment), St. Lucia (78%), US Virgin Islands (69%), Macau (66%), Maldives (60%), St. Kitts & Nevis (59%), British Virgin Islands (54%), Bahamas (52%), and Anguilla (51%). Looking toward the east, Cambodia, a tourist destination in Asia attracts over six million visitors annually.
Without doubt, travel and tourism play key role in lifting a people’s economy. When visitors flow into a destination, transportation, accommodation, provision of foods and other essential services arte duty bound to engage many locals by giving them jobs, and also stimulate other local businesses with multiplier effects. This in turn will lead to more infrastructure development, ultimately boosting the economic activities of a people or that of a state. Knowing the importance of this, travel and tourism’s contribution to the economy of China has more than doubled over the last decade – with a nudge around $2 trillion.
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It is well known that travel and tourism increases foreign exchange inflow. Few weeks back, Nigerians, nay, the world, was inundated with the report of Detty December revenue in Lagos. It is estimated that the influx of Nigerians into Lagos during the yuletide generated about $72 million; with $44 million accounting for hotel revenues and $13 million from short-let accommodations. It is imagined where these travel and tourism activities can be sustained, their importance in boosting the local economy in terms of spending by the tourists on goods and services cannot be overlooked.
While the tourism sector socio-economic flow was happening in Lagos in December 2024, the Oyo State capital, Ibadan (a distance of about 100 kilometres away from Lagos) was literally in pitch darkness throughout the period. Save for the few street-wise ones who understood the nooks to organise things for their loved ones, the Oyo State capital, and by extension the entire state, could pass for a ghost land in eerie silence. Not that Oyo State is oblivion to the economic potentials of travel and tourism industry. About eight months before December 2024, the state government had organised what it called International Tourism Summit (precisely April 17, 2024) following the Executive Order No. 002 of 2023 that was signed on October 23, 2023 to decouple the state’s Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism and creating the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as a stand-alone agency to pursue “the economic growth, cultural preservation, destination branding and sustainable development” of Oyo State.
Since the creation of the state in February 1976, and with the creation of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism through the 2023 Executive Order 2 to create opportunities to sustainably raise Oyo State’s internally generated revenue by harnessing the state’s culture and tourism potential and to leverage the low-hanging fruits available across the state’s culture and tourism landscape with the goal of facilitating economic development through promotion of arts, cultural events, tourist activities, and to create an enabling environment for tourism to thrive in the state, it’s been more of talking without any measurable outputs to show the state government really mean business.
At the April 2024 tourism summit the state government, through the paper presented by the Governor, said it had identified how to unlock the door to tourism potential in the state with the keys to deploy. These keys, three of them, are to make use of Public-Private-Partnership (PPP), Public-Development-Partnership (PDP), and Hybrid Partnerships (HP) to repackage identified six tourists destinations in the state – with three of them in the capital city.
But this declaration at the summit was not new at all. The governor, while preparing for his second term re-election, had hinged his campaign (popularly branded as ‘Omituntun 2.0’) on exemplary tourism development, among other key economic issues. The April 2024 summit only reiterated what he had unveiled during electioneering campaigns. However, almost two years to the second term and a year after the tourism summit, and despite the identified keys to unlock the tourism sector potential, it is yet to be seen how the high-level investors that are to discuss the figures are getting and biting slices of the investment cake.
To put the question directly, how far with the slicing of the Oyo State tourism cake, and are the investors already biting the sliced cake? With initial investment of N250 million in each of the focused six tourist centres and a projected annual 50% to 60% profit margin, it shouldn’t be a hard sell to investors who have uncanny sense of smell for money making opportunities. Likewise, the state government in its 2025 budget had earmarked N1.816 billion for culture and tourism (with N1.1 billion of it for capital expenditure) and expecting to realise N160 million as income.
With the eye-opening Detty December 2024, not a few states are already working toward the 2025 edition. After much talking and preparations on paper, one can say that the readiness of Oyo State to unleash its tourism sector is yet to be seen. Should one therefore declare that it is a case of patronising tourism idea but abysmal execution heading toward appalling finishing in the pace setter state? Or is it not?
Ola Emmanuel is a business planning consultant
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