Ikechi Uko is the organiser of Akwaaba Africa Travel Market, he spoke with ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA on the 18th edition of the yearly travel and tourism exhibition and conference, which recently held in Lagos
How do you feel on the successful staging of the 18th edition of Akwaaba Africa Travel Market last week?
I feel happy for so many reasons, one, for the fact that the first international version of the exhibition that we held post –COVID-19 was a success. We reduced it to two days and you could see that most of our normal and regular people came while the others are still working on coming back. This shows the recovering of the industry; this is super recovery that we were able to sustain this project and did it in the manner that we did this year. We thank God for this because a lot of businesses suffered and never recovered. So we are happy that Akwaaba came back and came back powerfully. We moved three days event into two days and we felt that it would be too crowded and so we dropped some other events.
There was no hospitality day, there was no aviation day and there were few countries days. People want to meet people and people want to do business. As I’m talking to you now East African Women in Tourism Association was launched here because there was a large contingent from East Africa.
Were you taken aback by this development?
We were not surprised that they formed East African Women in Tourism Association here and that shows it was a success. There were quite a lot of businesses with Sierra Leone, Ghana, Cameroon, Benin Republic, Kenya and others. The business this year was bigger than in previous years and why? Because people haven’t done business for two years, so this was the first time and I wasn’t surprised that the collaborations were massive.
The presence of West Africa countries was not as pronounced as in previous years, what do you think accounted for this?
West Africa was just five per cent of the international tourism but sadly so because we are close to 40 per cent of Africa as three of the largest countries in Africa are here and you have the highest number of countries yet you have the least number of tourist arrivals. The other regions are way ahead of West Africa. That is why and two, West Africans haven’t understood how to market. Benin Republic is less than 25 minutes flight from Lagos but I can tell you that Ghana gets more Nigerians than Benin Republic because of the little effort at marketing by Ghana. Kenya and South Africa are even doing better and now Rwanda. So you ask yourself, what exactly are we doing? Are we marketing our tourism very well? How well are we doing? Obviously, we are not doing better as those other countries are doing better than us.
What are some of the lessons from the event this year?
The lesson for me is that the reason for Akwaaba is still there because that is the only reason that we did it and it succeeded. I was told that we are still one of the few events that drew a large audience. That is the first lesson, that the business case for Akwaaba is still valid and that Akwaaba is still valid. We are retooling Akwaaba to adapt it to the changing environment. That is what brought about the medical tourism and next year we are bringing educational tourism. We follow the trend and we try to take advantage of it to build tourism. The lesson again, is that you should never sit in one place. We kept changing, as the business environment changes we adapt and we will adapt a lot more next year. We have also found out that the public want the Jollof rice competition and so we have to bring it back next year. Because the biggest complaint by everybody was about the Jollof rice competition as they kept asking where is the Jollof rice competition?
Did the focus on medical tourism this year meet?
Yes, it met mine expectation. Because it was something that we started three months ago and we were able to get the government of Turkey involved and some other countries that I don’t want to name. Their embassies calling us and sending people here today to come and observe what we are doing here today.
Then the biggest part of it was that we were able to get Lagos State government to partner with us. I never knew that there was health insurance by the state until the Commissioner of Health, Professor Akin Abayomi, in his presentation today revealed that and many more things that they are doing on the health front. So, tourism is not just outbound but it is both inbound and domestic. We approached Lagos State government that we wanted to see the medical tourism opportunities in the state and the commissioner of health honoured us and pushed all the arguments. We are very, very satisfied with the success of the medical tourism session, it was our first time and it worked well. Already we have countries that have booked for next year for medical tourism. It is already a way to success because this year was prospecting and the interest was there, so we are going ahead with it as it is going to feature a lot more in the future.
Besides the success of the medical tourism what else stood out for you this year?
For me, one of the things that excited me about this year’s Akwaaba was that we were able to give the non-Nigerians a Lagos experience. The first was a beach party; eat all you can and it was collaboration between Wakanow, NIHTOUR and Akwaaba. It was massive. NIHOTOUR provided foods from every part of Nigeria, Wakanow provided the drinks and the beach while Akwaaba did the organisation.
The first impression that they had of Nigeria was wow. Second impression, yesterday we hosted them for a dinner at Mrs. Florence Ita-Giwa’s Echoes of Calabar Restaurant. She provided cultural performance and that was wow as well. Today (The last day of the event), we are hosting them to a boat cruise on the lagoon to climax it. It is something that gives them a good impression about Nigeria and that you didn’t just come to do business alone but did business and you had an extremely good outing. We are happy about that.
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