…As Mbanefo describes staff as her core stakeholders

Following the Memorandum of Understanding between the Nigerian Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC) and ABC Transport on promotion of domestic tourism in Nigeria, the NTDC’s Tour Abuja City Project will kick start in August.

This was disclosed during the opening ceremony of a two-day NTDC staff retreat, held at the Village Hall of the corporation in Abuja, recently.

The project, according to the Director-General of the corporation, Mrs. Sally Mbanefo, was to market tourist sites in Abuja, thereby encouraging residents in the city to visit tourist sites therein.

Mbanefo disclosed that ABC Transport has assigned two sight-seeing busses to the project to take Abuja residents from one tourist destination to the other, adding that, “the busses will pick people from nine designated bus stops to 24 tourist sites/landmarks in Abuja city.”

Meanwhile, Sally Mbanefo described members of staff of the corporation as the core stakeholders in the Nigeria’s tourism industry, pointing out that neglect of the staff was why the nation’s tourism master plan never worked.

“Why all the tourism master plans we have been having in the country did not work is that they abandoned the staff, and pay no or less attention to the welfare of the staff, that are going to drive the project, direct the strategic imperative of the organization,” she decried.

“I appreciate the fact that staffs of the NTDC, the implementers of the corporation’s strategic imperatives, are the core stakeholders in the industry, hence, they must be well equipped and practically made ambassadors of the Nigeria’s tourism industry to drive development in the industry. We must feed the goose that lays the golden egg.

“As a result, capacity building and staff welfare are the priority on my agenda in repositioning the Nigeria’s tourism industry and promoting domestic tourism in the country. And this, I will execute to the latter.

“Following our Memorandum of Understanding with The Gambia Tourism Board, 20 NTDC staff will be going for an exchange programme in Gambia on customer care, public relations, health and safety, administration, management, and project management. Meanwhile, the Gambia Tourism Board are inviting tourism specialists from Netherland to imbibe our staffs with tourism best practices,” Mbanefo said.

The retreat, Mbanefo said, was organized to equip the staff of the corporation on how to generate revenue, as well strengthening their capacity for enhanced service delivery to tourism stakeholders.

Enlightening the staff on her activities in the first year in office, Mbanefo said: “We want all Nigerians to recognize the importance of tourism; that is why we used the first year of our administration to create awareness and agree on implementable policy framework that would make it possible for the country to harness the potentials that abound in the tourism sector.

“Staff will be locally trained on how to be involved in revenue generation, and to have understanding of what role they have to play because they are my most important stakeholders in this tourism value chain.”

While reviewing her 2014 revenue generation plan during the retreat, Mbanefo stated that one of her plans was to make the corporation independent of government handouts.

“One of the reasons behind revenue generation is for NTDC to become independent of government handout, we believe that in all the country that have tourism best practices, tourism is what the nations survive on; but that is not the case with Nigeria.

“But with NTDC’s strive on tourism and the support of all the partners we have signed MOU with, we are going to generate revenue not just for NTDC alone but for the whole country, then, there would be a future, then, the desperation on oil will be reduced, there will be jobs.

“Through the domestic tourism campaign which we are using to encourage Nigerians to travel within Nigeria, we have traveled around the six geo political zones, and our plan is to develop one tourism site in every geo-political zone within two years.”

Mbanefo also appealed to the government to pay more attention to tourism, adding that tourism should not be abandoned because it has high potential. “Out of 170 million Nigerians, if just 20 million Nigerians travel within Nigeria we have potential revenue of $4billion, that is something to think about because it will affect all sectors of the economy positively,” Mbanefo explained.