Tourism, like other sectors of a country's economy, influences its global competitiveness. Several countries have recorded successes in socio-economic diversification, quick penetration, and transitioning in foreign direct investments. However, in Nigeria, the numerous socio-economic potentials, human capital, and natural resources are evident. The capsuled elements that accord it that gigantic status include its geographical location, heterogeneous culture/heritage, land mass, and population. This chapter examines the extent to which these resources can be effectively explored to achieve competitive advantage. Taking into consideration the internal strengths and opportunities, this chapter adopts the framework of Prahlad and Hamel's core competence model to proffer practical managerial solutions for the tourism enterprise in Nigeria. The findings suggest that the key drivers in the growth of the tourism enterprise in Nigeria are managerial skills, phenomena, and environment.
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Tourism has been recognized as one of the world’s fastest growing sectors, with significant role in economic development of nations. Yusuff & Akinde (2015) identify tourism firms to include hotels, resorts, theatres, shopping centres among other attraction points. As an economic sector, tourism brings about economic diversification and promotes regional equalities while also supporting several other industries to create employment opportunities.
As a key economic driver through enhancing income growth, the spending on global tourism over the years continue to rise. According to the World Tourism Organization (2016), disbursements rose from US$1.3 trillion (contributing 6% of the world’s gross domestic product) to US$1.3 trillion in 2018 (contributing 10.4% of the world’s gross domestic product). The United Kingdom Bureau of Statistics (2015) also noted that the hospitality industry employs not less than 2.7 million people and the industry was valued around £524-600 billion. Due to the robust nature of the industry, there is increased attention by scholars, investors and governments. This stems not only because tourism affords people the pleasure of stress release and sight-seeing, but for the stead of major economic base as the thronging of tourists intensifies (Steinmetz, 2010).
Generally speaking, tourism development is driven by a number of factors, ranging from the uniqueness of tourist products and packages marketed (Pechlaner & Pichler, 2013; Mehmetoglu & Normann, 2013), cultural attractions and gastronomy (Fischer, 2009), internal security (Sainaghi, 2006), diversity of geographical features and good infrastructure as well as hospitable behavior/skills (Volgger, Pechlaner & Pichler, 2013) among others. Boyatziz (1982) cited in Hallin & Marnburg (2007) described these as the underlying characteristics of tourist destinations and they contribute decisively to the development of core competence.
According to Mehmetoglu & Normann (2013), the competitiveness of any destination, among others, depends on their ability to configure management strategy around these specific features as they provide competitive advantages to the enterprise in case they are unit/rare, valuable and sustainable. In the same vein, Volgger, Pechlaner & Pichler (2013) argue that combining high-quality infrastructure, diverse culture with social skills of hospitality personnel as core competence may build up and develop a niche for a nation compared with other competitors in the hospitality market in the long term. This underlines the theoretical postulation of core competency models.
While many tourist destinations in developed countries have realized this and configured their management strategy around their core competence as well as build business models that support these competences, little is known on the available core competence of the tourism enterprise in Nigeria. This is in spite of the importance theories and empirical works have accorded to identification and development of key competency as the major determinants of enterprise performance. It is against this backdrop that this study is designed to identify core competence necessary to drive competitive advantages in Nigerian tourism enterprise.