TOURISM CLUSTERS IN SOUTH-SOUTH NIGERIA
Authors:
Aniedi Udo Essien* & Eno Eyak James
Abstract:
This study seeks to evolve a hierarchical grouping of tourism points in the South-South geo-political zone in Nigeria in order to provide a workable framework for tourism planning and management in the region. Data were collected on the functional attributes of thirty existing tourism points using a checklist containing twenty tourism structures. Factor Analysis was applied to investigate the functional similarity of the tourism points and to generate tourism clusters based on these similarities as captured in the factor scores. Results showed a four-level hierarchical ordering of tourism points. They include the first – order tourism cluster with very high functional attributes; second-order tourism cluster with the high level of functionality; third-order tourism cluster with low functional status and the fourth-order tourism cluster with a very low level of functionality. In the light of these findings, tourism planners and managers in Nigeria and indeed globally can strategically adopt the “tourism cluster” arrangement as an instrument for planning and developing regional tourism structures in the country.