NIHOTOUR closer to making tourism a goldmine – Kangiwa

The National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR) has said it is closer to making the tourism sector a ‘goldmine’ to contribute to the development and revenue drive of the country’s economy.

The Director-General the NIHOTOUR, Alhaji Nura Kangiwa, said this on Friday at the opening of a retreat organised for senior management staff of the organisation across the six geopolitical zones in Keffi, Nasarawa State.

According to him, this would go a long way in boosting the country’s economy, especially as the theme of the retreat is: “Taking NIHOTOUR to Greater Heights: Post COVID-19.”

He said the organisation was determined to turn the hospitality and tourism sector in the country to a goldmine by focusing on staff welfare, capacity development and sector-specific repositioning.

He said the three-point agenda would be implemented over the next four years in three phases of short, medium and long term.

He added that this objective was to engender a culture of excellence sustained by a well-motivated workforce, thus, focusing on training and retraining of staff, regular staff promotion and educational grants for further studies.

“Already, I have commenced the implementation of the staff welfare agenda with the recent release of promotion letters for members of staff across the campuses. Members of staff will be trained on Information Communication Technology (ICT).

“The coronavirus pandemic has shown us that this is the way to go; therefore, we will aggressively invest in the development of our ICT facilities for the deployment of our training activities. In this day and age, no worker can be productive without ICT know-how, especially in NIHOTOUR, a citadel of tourism learning,” Kangiwa said.