HR’s role in building a tourism economy.

Building your own Santorini!

Trips abroad, summer holidays, we all love these things, good times to make memories with loved ones, who wouldn’t want a holiday. Nigerians work soo hard, so so so so hard that during the lockdown, all stock index’ weren’t affected. Surprised! I sure as hell was, and it wasn’t only in Nigeria, it was the rest of the world as well. 

If you don’t know much about capitalism then the little you should know today is that in most capitalist run economies, the economies still do great with you out of work. Your full years work amounts to little in the GDP, yet we work tirelessly to spin the wheels. 

Nigerians are particularly a tough bunch when it comes to working all year round, some think it shows loyalty to the office, others don’t see the use of a holiday or a break because they need to make the money that will be spent while on holiday or breaks or vacations.

Take a break my friend, “work no dey finish”, our ancestors are all dead and they too worked all their lives. Our time on earth is but a grain of sand on a beach, thus the adage “YOLO”. Some would argue that we only die once instead and we live everyday, but, what is a life of hustling tirelessly without a shred of fun, excitement or unforgettable memories with loved ones.

The workforce in Nigeria can be refreshed and revitalised with incentivised work breaks or vacations. Most Fortune 500 companies encourage you to go on vacations to rejuvenate your inner strength for another level of dedicated work. Vacations help you ease work stress and tension, and if you like to travel, it helps open you to new experiences, food, culture, colours, music, lifestyles, you name it, enough to form a repository of inner strength and widen a persons horizon to appreciating differences at the work place.

A mind that can understand cultural or personal perspectives and differences can better understand what may be needed to get a team to deliver on their projects, or carry everyone along, or just put in your best at work because they have recently been rejuvenated from holiday.

HR in Nigeria need to do more in making holidays and vacations an important aspect of the business process if they really want to bring out the best in their employees, and who better to partner with than the ministry of Tourism at federal and state level. We all want to go to Dubai, the Maldives, Santorini, Madagascar or somewhere nice and fun, who wouldn’t. Trust me even me writing this, I’m tempted, however, we are looking at rapidly growing our economy into the same standards as these people mentioned above.

If my HR recommends me to pick from any 5 Nigerian tourist destinations in Nigeria for holiday and the incentives are fantastic, loads of memorable activities to undertake, 5 star experience, I don’t see how anyone would want to decline. Ministries of tourism would need to invest heavily in making it a memorable experience and constantly thrive to bring more locations onstream to rival other world class destinations, then we can grow the holiday industry from the scare crow it is today.

Incentivised vacationing means, you spend less from your salary so that the government can pool resources to create, upgrade, standardise, new and existing tourist destinations within the country, fortunately there are existing paid work breaks and paid leaves existing in todays work spaces. For the ministries and government this would undoubtedly mean, improving road networks, rail, security and electricity to and at these tourist locations. The whole perception of the holiday experience will need to be worked on as well to change the current narratives, with lots of work in advertising, incentivising and popularising the new industry to become mainstream. 

Tourism is always a billion dollar industry in any nation and ours seems to be slipping into oblivion. We have great sights that need proper investment not from borrowing abroad but by innovating from within. Whether on a mandatory scheme similar to the NSITF (which we can’t categorically say is achieving great strides) or voluntarily when you sign up to the vacation scheme, a fraction of one’s basic salary for a fun filled experience dwarfs spending a huge chunk of one’s life’s savings to go abroad for almost the same experience.

We can create at least a million jobs across existing and new tourism sites on a working tourism industry, from creation of tourism new sites to site entertainers, site vendors for food, clothing, artworks, booking companies, chauffeur services, escort (security) services and many more.

Written by Mundez
edmundez@me.com