Sustainability approach to Tourism and its Development within Cross River State, Southern Nigeria with Geospatial Techniques

International Journal of Geoinformatics and Geological Science

© 2020 by SSRG - IJGGS Journal

Volume 7 Issue 2

Year of Publication : 2020

Authors : Mfoniso Asuquo Enoh, Nnam Uchechukwu Godwin, Thompson S. Okoyen

10.14445/23939206/IJGGS-V7I2P101

How to Cite?

Mfoniso Asuquo Enoh, Nnam Uchechukwu Godwin, Thompson S. Okoyen, "Sustainability approach to Tourism and its Development within Cross River State, Southern Nigeria with Geospatial Techniques," SSRG International Journal of Geoinformatics and Geological Science, vol. 7,  no. 2, pp. 1-13, 2020. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.14445/23939206/IJGGS-V7I2P101

Abstract:

Today, tourism is one of the most important industries which contributes to more than ten percentage of the world’s GDP. The industry is important because of the amount of income it brings into many countries as well as the ways it aids interconnection throughout the world. In Africa, tourism is an important sector which play a vital function in the continent’s development as well as generate foreign revenues. However, sequel to lack of update and efficient maintenance of available data, the tourism industry faces a lot of setback, mostly in developing countries, and could go extinct with time. The problem of inadequate update and efficient maintenance has caused the Government of the various developing countries to loose enormous revenues which would have aided the necessary infrastructure in improving the people’s standard of living as well as their way of life. This set back in tourism industry in developing countries such as Nigeria, has made it difficult for these countries to be listed as major tourist attractions in the world. Therefore, this study sees the need to correct that effect and thus aims in mapping and development of a geospatial database to attract in Southern Nigeria, Cross River as a case and adopting the Geographic Information System (GIS) approach. To achieve this aim, Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and the base map were utilized to create various coordinates of tourism locations as well as for geo – referencing and to update already existing maps. The result of the database queries showed the location of tourist attractions in Cross River State, which can be visualized in the Arc – GIS environment. The study also shows that GIS techniques can be adopted for mapping as well as for development of tourism areas with the aid of maps. Thus, this study therefore recommends continuous updating of the database with time, and as development process in the study area, so as to acquire new tourism areas within the study area.

Keywords:

GIS, Tourism, Database, Cross River State

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