My World, Our View!!!
The reality of the world being a global village is now widely defined by pixels and appreciated through billions of views. Telling one’s story is easier now with camera lenses making realities more and more real. It is why the cliché has become true that indeed "pictures tell a thousand words".
These views are the new world order, they give us a new sense of responsibility and belonging; a single picture can now resonate thousands of miles, giving rise to millions of thoughts. People travel and appreciate new places everyday by just a click, they expereinece cultures without once setting foot in a foreign land.
The market force created by this new order is enormous .With more than one billion international tourists now traveling the world each year, exchange on the world wide web is increasing. People are more attracted to what they see than what they hear, so a place with its view in circulation is more likely to attract tourists than those without one.
Tourism is has proven in the 21st century to be more than an afterthought, but a critical player in inclusive and sustainable development. For most States like Enugu which seeks a future in the tourism industry as an alternative to the oil driven economy, settling for only Events in the three components of tourism within our sphere, leaving Facilities and Attraction to suffer at the mercy of our poor planning and lack of a robust tourism policy is not only deterrent but counterproductive. We must look at the enormous opportunity created by the new Information Age. They must try as much as possible to share with the world our attractions at its raw form with policies that will encourage investors to set up Facilities.
Startups and Small businesses must be encouraged, Mass media and New media must be given more tasks to challenge them, and as a result create a better narrative for the State. We must, at the very least, be able to tell and share our own stories. To achieve this, the ministries and Government agencies directly involved with image management can become as a matter of emphasis more media friendly. They can start using our own media outlets both new media and mass media to carry out every needed publicity on tourist sites and cultural memorabilia.
I push for an urgency in developing a robust Tourism Policy that will set the agenda for the years to come. To catch up we require both a quick fix and the big bang. We need to create trends that will appeal to our audience focusing on our strengths, our endowments and our accomplishments. Yearly we deal with about twenty thousand influx of youths into our numerous higher institutions, which according to economic studies is a massive market. This huge market potential is at our service to bring to fore what will appeal to them and make them stay back after their years of study.
Brands like the Miss Coal city, Miss Enugu Tourism, Nwada Igbo Beauty Pageant and others can be encouraged to thrive as the youths are allowed to exercise their freedom of creativity. More tourism sites are encouraged to open up with media platforms positioned to maximise these entries with the best representations for country wide and optimistically, global consumption.
Current new media focusing on Enugu States activities are @ConnectEnugu, @Coal_city,@Enugu_MP, @80snigeria
With the right systems, we will well be on our way to being on the map of places people not only visit, but are glad both to revisit and recommend.
Ajuluchukwu Benjamin Edechiene.
CEO, 80s Nigeria Limited
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