Assessing the Organic Image of Potential Tourists towards North-Eastern Nigeria as a Tourism Destination

Abstract

Many tourism destination areas in North-Eastern Nigeria are decaying due to poor tourism activities because of individual's perceived positive, negative or impersonal image about the region, based on information obtained from other sources, and coupled with their mindsets. The region is specially blessed with ample of natural, human-made and cultural resources above others. Despite such availability, the attractions are yet under-utilized. This study focusses on assessing the organic image of potential tourists to North-Eastern Region of Nigeria, as a tourism destination. Quantitative method was adopted by the study to explore related and useful data from 242 questionnaires obtained from respondents outside the region under investigation, covering five other geopolitical regions of the country. Data was analyzed with Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) software for in-depth analysis. To examine whether or not there is a major difference in potential tourists' perception based on regions towards visit to the North-Eastern Nigeria; correlation was used to compare the level of perceptions among the regions. Findings revealed that regions with predominantly common culture and religious background have fewer negative views on the North-East and tend to visit certain areas of the region for tourism, while regions with different sociocultural and religious background hold little or no intention to visit the region; potential tourists have diverse perceptions of which if combined would significantly improve the tourism destination and attract more visitors. Promotion of the tourism destination areas must be realistic aiming at building confidence in the minds of potential tourists who might eventually visit the North-Eastern Nigeria for tourism consumption.