Cross River targets million tourists

The Cross River state government has restated its avowed commitment to attract one million tourist to the state yearly.

Mr Clement Umina ,Managing Director, of Cross River State Tourism Bureau, made this known on Wednesday during the World Tourism Day celebration in Calabar.

Umina said that the Cross River sate is poised to making sure that one million visitors state with view to generating 1.7 billion naira yearly from the tourism sector.

His words: " From our findings ,we know that if a visitor stays in the state for two nights he or she will spend close to 34,000 naira and when this multiplied by one million tourists which is our target we can generate about 34 billion naira and when the five percent is released to the state as me levy we have about 1.7billion naira"

"We want to use this works tourism day celebration to launch the campaign on " No Standard ,No Tourism" whereby tourists who are coming to Cross River will enjoy value for thier money becuase our target is to market a destination that tourists will love to repeatedly visit and also get quality service delivery"

" It is quite unfortunate that we don't have up to 50 hotels and hospitality outfits who are duly licensed but we are determined to make the sector which is the highest employer of labour to become more viable" 

 

Also speaking ,the Commissioner for Culture and Tourism,Eric Anderson said that Cross River state defines tourism.

According to him: "Being a tourism capital of the nation ,the Ayade adminstration has embroided our tourism with the campaign of enterprise as a spirit for development and this has paved way for great tourism innovation"

He said innovations like Calasvegas,Yatch clubwater games,Carnival monrail amongst others are ways to attracts more people to the destination 

His words : "Tourism is an important tool for growth has factored in UN concept of sustainable development; sustainable tourism is therefore an integration of developmental element meaning that it must be responsible and not destructive,this is the path the state is towing" 

"As a government we are determined to adopt appropriate policies that will boost the tourism sector of the state " he stated,he stated.