Negative headlines not good for tourism industry- LCCI boss
Ebere Chibuzor
The Director-General, Lagos Chamber Of Commerce & Industry, Mr. Muda Yusuf has expressed optimism over the state of tourism and hospitality industry in Nigeria, urging that for tourism and hospitality industries to thrive there have to be stronger collaboration between the media and the tourism and hospitality industry.
Speaking, on Tuesday, at the Hoteliers’ Association Of Nigeria South-West Zone 2017, South West Hotel Conference held at the Administrative Staff College, Badagry, Lagos, with theme: ‘Emerging Marketing Trends in Tourism and Hospitality sector of the Nigerian economy, He noted that perception matters, and pointed out that the media has a lot of roles to play in shaping the perception of tourists either the domestic tourist or international tourist.
He said,”It is the perception that defines the brand of an institution of a country and industry; and the media has a lot of role to play in shaping the perception of tourist either the domestic tourist or international tourists.
Every country has its challenges, but it is not a good thing that the only thing that make headlines are the bad things. You pick up a newspaper, the headlines are most often very negative, you switch on television the headlines are very often bad things”.
He said, “All those things adversely affect the growth of tourism and hospitality industry. We need to do a lot in the area of branding and the media has a big role to play on this”.
Yusuf said, We have hospitality and tourism group, but we need to get them to be more active just as I was also telling them that they need to be more visible.
“They need to be more active to bring up issues affecting the industry because the louder you are, the more attention you get.”
On the creative industry, he said that “They have made a lot of progress, but the progress cannot be ascribed to the support they are getting. The progress is to a large extent, but on the kind of support they expect from government, I’m not sure they are getting it as yet.’
The problems of shooting, piracy, facilities, even those in the fashion industry sometimes they face the challenge of bringing the right kind of fabrics because of some import policies; and there is a lot of potential in that area.
The progress you are seeing are more from the internal energy and internal resources from those who are players in the industry, but we need some external support from the government”.
On CBN’s monetary policy, he said,” This is a major issue and we should continue to engage the government on that at some point someone will listen and things will change. The forex policy today is different from what it was as at one or two years before today, there has been a shift; at some point, they said the bank should stop collecting forex from anybody.
Interest rate today is too high, especially on long time investments like all these hospitality businesses, agriculture, solid minerals, construction companies or property, unless you have very solid equity capital and how many people get equity capital.” he asked
