Nigeria rated fastest air travel market in Africa

Nigeria has been identified by travel and
hospitality experts as the fastest growing air
travel market in Africa recording 1.5 million
visitors last year.
Experts told THISDAY that studies done on the
industry have indicated that Nigeria’s hospitality
industry has overtaken that of South Africa,
Mauritius and China.
According to them, while growth in the
hospitality and travel industry in Nigeria is
phenomenon, the market in the other countries
have been saturated.
And travel expert, Ikechi Uko attributed the
growth in Nigeria to the emerging middle class,
in spite of the seemingly economic stagnation.
“The middle class is growing at incredible rate
and that explains why the economy cabin of
many airlines operating into Nigeria record load
factor. Those who will tell you that the economy
is not growing are those who board business
class. They don’t know what is happening at the
economy class.”Uko said.
He noted that many new international hotels are
extending their operations to Nigeria, especially
Lagos and the rates have not come down
because of high patronage.
“Lagos is the fourth most visited city in Africa
and Nigeria is an environment that rewards
efforts and when people travel to new places
they see new things and they do business.
Nigeria is rated the biggest destination in West
Africa,” he said.
Uko said one of the
reasons Akwaaba
travel market is
growing is because more people are eager to
come to Nigeria and the market provides face to
face marketing, which makes business to be
done faster.
“It is believed that it is Nollywood that has
changed people’s impression about Nigeria. It
inadvertently became a marketing took as the
films paint real and idyllic picture of the
country,” he said.
An aviation expert, Nick Fadugba has once
described Nigeria as the fastest air transport
market in Africa, saying that the country should
reposition its airlines to benefit from this viable
market.
“An important distinction between Nigeria and
most other countries in Africa is that Nigerian air
traffic is almost inelastic, the high demand will
still be there regardless of most crises. In
contrast, North African countries depend on
foreign tourism for most of their air traffic. In that
environment, once there is a political crisis the
foreign tourists flee, the aircraft are empty,
revenues are down, airline staff laid off and
aircraft are parked, it is a catastrophe.
Fortunately, Nigerian air traffic is very resilient.
Not many foreign tourists come to Nigeria and air
traffic is driven primarily by business and
Nigerian travellers. Hopefully, more foreign
tourists will visit Nigeria in the future but at the
moment, if there is crisis in Nigeria, people still
tend to fly there for business,” Fadugba said.
[This Day]