Financial Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on the Nigerian Tourism Industry: Policy Implications

This chapter examined the financial effects of COVID-19 pandemic on the Nigerian tourism by disaggregating the tourism sector into transportation industry, accommodation industry, travelling agencies, resorts/tourist site and regulatory agencies. Specifically, this study only targeted 240 key players in the Nigerian Tourism sector in Lagos state while the sourced data were analysed using Pearson correlation analysis. The result revealed that the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic has a negative statistical influence on both the transportation and accommodation industry. The financial implication of this result is that the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic increased the cost of transport, sharply reduced revenue inflow into the transportation and accommodation industry Again, the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic exerted positive significant influence on Travel agency and resort/tourist site. However, the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic exerted positive insignificance influence on regulatory agency. Hence, the study concluded that the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic increased the cost of transport, sharply reduced revenue inflow into accommodation industry, increased travel agency and resort/tourist site costs. Premised on this, the study recommends that the federal government should ensure that the cost of transportation is subsidized, as this would help to correct the negative effect of COVID-19 on the Nigerian transportation industry.