Assessing Tourism Potentials for Rebranding Nigeria

Abstract

The World Tourism organization (WTO) ranks tourism as one of the top 5 export resource for 83% of world countries and is also number one export earner for 38% of countries worldwide. But regrettably, Nigeria's abundant tourism resources and deposits have remained grossly under exploited thereby making the country to lose much of the gains most other notable tourist destinations draw from it. Outside the common economic gains made from tourism, Nigeria is evidently ignorant of so many others. This paper holds that apart from becoming Nigeria's viable alternative to oil, tourism can indeed become the country's global brand which would ultimately alter her current negative global image. As a global brand, tourism could therefore be used to rebrand or reposition Nigeria's corporate image. A tourism development circle model is developed along this line by the paper.