New Telegraph

Lagos to become tourism destination of Nigeria – Commissioner

Lagos State Government has reinstated its commitment to making the state tourism destination in Nigeria. The Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf, said the state is partnering with QTourism Limited in building capacity for the tourism industry in the state.

Speaking at the launch of the Q4-Lagos Initiative, Abinbile-Yusuf said the initiative is designed to support Lagos Tourism Master Plan and various tourism stakeholders to achieve the maximum visitor potential for a cosmopolitan Lagos. She said the industry will boost revenues and recovery of Lagos economy.

Abinbile-Yusuf said, “Our main focus is to use the platform of this initiative to establish Lagos as the Premier Destination all Season through a Data-Driven Calendar of activities that will make data of visitors to the State readily available for immediate use and future reference.

“With this launch of this Q4-Lagos Initiative, it is now compulsory for all our stakeholders to always keep the ministry informed of all their activities and programmes for the purpose of collating necessary data from these events.

“The Ministry considered it worrisome that there are no reliable statistics and data about the numbers of visitors or tourists that visit Lagos on yearly basis. The data about their contributions to the State’s economy are often not captured as well. The need to change this and have more holistic data on tourists to Lagos State brought about the conceptualization of the Q4 Initiative.

“Q-4 which is intended to be a yearly event that will help market Lagos in such a way that tourists will always be looking forward to spending their holidays in Lagos as tourism and entertainment activities for the four quarters would have been collated for tourists to plan the quarter of the year they will visit Lagos.

“The fact that Lagos is known for its rich tourism potential and entertainment activities that run from January to December, tourists and visitors to the State can be assured of undiluted fun experience that will guarantee world-class maximum entertainment and relaxation.

“The decision of the Ministry to promote Q4-LAGOS Initiatives was inspired by the infamous clarion call “Eko for Show!”, being a callout to the global tourism industry that Lagos is ready to assume her prime position as The Destination for Tourism, Hospitality, Events and Holidays in each of the four quarters of the year.

Representative of QTourism Limited, Ivor Ekpe, said the initiative will provide real-time data for tourists visiting Lagos State. He noted that the company had built a platform to assist the government, private sector investors and tourists in accessing information in the tourism sector.

Ekpe said, “The importance of this programme is that we are moving into the last quarter of the year and there are going to be many events and activities in Lagos. People are going to come in, people are going to hold shows and hotels are going to have a lot of traffic.

“This is just the beginning of gathering information and it is also on the flip side, trying to assure people looking at Lagos that we have recommendations for them at no cost. For any sort of planning, you need information and the information you have to gather it. The manner in which you choose to gather it determines the outcome of what you wish to achieve.

“We as a private company are focused on true real data for tourism as a whole so that when we have to support the government or support your private sector, we are offering you information we truly gathered, mined and you can work more realistically in making your projections.”

Read Previous

Algeria’s Fennecs edge Super Eagles 2-1 in Oran

Read Next

Abeco Tanks support water continuity in Nigeria

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *