Youths Awareness and Visit Patterns to Recreation-Cum-Tourists Destinations in Lagos State, Nigeria

Abstract

Determined to galvanise her tourism sector, the Nigerian government publicised the nation’s Tourism Master Plan in 2005, which among others, highlighted the near-crisis state of tourism infrastructure compounded by a rather negligible affinity for domestic tourism. Governments’ response to highlighted challenges reflects their partial understanding. It has dwelt primarily on overhauling and provision of newer infrastructure, without due attention to domestic leisure-consumption attitudinal reorientation, arguably the most potent driver of domestic tourism. Persuaded nevertheless, that the starting point towards achieving leisure-habit reorientation is the documentation of current tourism attitudinal inclinations, this paper analyzes the pattern of youths’ awareness and patronage of recreation/tourism destinations in Lagos State. It combines purposive and stratified sampling designs to generate school-based adolescents who answered questions on awareness and patronage of existing tourism destinations, using a multidimensional questionnaire. Findings, among others, show marginal differences in the contrasted socio-demographic attributes between genders; marginal differences in their awareness and patronage of existing tourism destinations and also, in the relevance of hypothesised variables selected to explain variations in the patterns of awareness and patronage of tourism destinations. The study then examined the intervention implications of its findings and the need for further research in the context of tourism-demand segmentation.

Keywords: Awareness, baseline analysis, behavioural determinants, patronage, youth tourism