Nigeria has been identi
fied by travel and hospitality experts as the fastest growing air travel market in Africa, recording 1.5million visitors last year.
Experts told newsmen that studies carried out on the industry have indicated that Nigeria’s hospitality industry has overtaken that of South Africa, Mauritinia 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.
A travel expert, Mr Ikechi Uko, attributed the growth in Nigeria to the emerging middle class, in spite of the seeming 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 in 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 stated.
Another aviation expert, Mr Nick Fadugba,0 described Nigeria as the fastest air transport market in Africa, stressing that the country should reposition its airlines to benefit from the viable market.
An important destination 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.