97% of Nigeria’s tourism revenue in 2016 derived ‘from domestic trips’

97% of Nigeria’s tourism revenue in 2016 was gotten from domestic trips between January and December 2016, says the Nigerian hospitality report for 2017.

Foreign trips, on the other hand, accounted for 3% of the total tourism revenue.

The report was put together by Jumia Travel.

Kushal Dutta, managing director of Jumia Travel Nigeria said: “This is a good sign that we need to encourage a lot more travels within the country by designing attractive holiday packages that will be exciting enough for Nigerians to want to spend money on tourism within the country.

“As a company, we are interested in collaborating to encourage more Nigerians to enjoy their holidays within Nigeria.

“We have captured relevant data on the percentage of online booking over offline; most used tool for hotel searches; most preferred payment method; average price of hotels from highest to lowest demand in cities; percentage of hotel bookings by star ratings, as well as percentage of hotel bookings by amenities.”

Bruce Prins, a hospitality consultant who was featured in the report, stated that the industry in 2016 suffered extreme pressure due to the reduction in foreign visitors and local corporate expenditure.

“In 2017, there will be more recreational facilities, and services will be required; better reservation systems that are 24 hour, and easy to action will be the deal-breaker.

“Ease or disease of air travel will affect everything; renovation and maintenance will make a hotel, and the lack thereof will break a hotel; and social media is, and will be even more so the most powerful marketing tool,” Prins explained.

According to Jumia Travel, the tourism industry contributed N1.7billion ($5.5 million) to Nigeria’s GDP in 2016.