1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Tourism is the travel for recreation, leisure, religious, family business purposes, usually of a limited duration. Tourism is considered an activity essential to Nations because of its direct effects on social, cultural, educational and economic sectors of National societies and their International relations.

According to the third edition of the Oxford English dictionary, tourism is defined as the commercial organization and operation of holidays and visits to place of interest.

Tourism can be defined as a short-term movement of people to places some distance away from their normal place of residence to indulge in pleasurable activities. (Swarbrook and Horner, 2007).

When a person leaves his home town for another location in the same country, he is termed a Domestic tourist. But if he crosses the frontiers of his country, he then becomes an International tourist. The people who visit Minna in December to attend the Akpazuma festival are domestic tourists while those who come from other countries to visit the Gurara water falls, are International tourists.

However, tourism is fast becoming one of the most functional industries in the world. It makes great impact in Nations by helping to create employment opportunities, by developing infrastructures, and a very rich source of income and revenue.

It plays an important role by offering employment to a good number of a Nation’s population that could be doctors, dancers, engineers, labourers, entertainers etc. For instance, in places like Britain over three million people are engaged in tourism, also in Spain and Italy, the figures are higher than seventy percent respectively. This explains why both countries are world leaders in the tourism industry. Nigeria has a huge number of parks, holiday resorts, and hotels. It is estimated that the Nigerian tourism industry can employ a hundred thousand people. By doing this, the large number of unemployed people would be removed from idleness and joblessness.

Tourism helps improve a nation’s infrastructural development. It provides amenities such as good transport and communication network, cheap and comfortable accommodations, essential infrastructures and super structures. As a result of this, tourism has been integrated into the national plans of many countries to raise the economic standard of physical of their environments and improve the people’s social interaction. Tourism also creates a considerable impact on the improvement of the general features of the environment, the establishment of hotels and allied industries. It also provides benefits that come in the form of provision of necessary infrastructure, provision of electricity, the construction of roads, and portable water supply and sewage disposal system.

As a rich source of income and revenue; tourism has become one of the most integral source of foreign exchange and balance of payments to many tourism inclined countries. This can be exemplified by Britain whose greatest exports includes tourism which is one of the fastest growing items of International trade.

Besides being a source of foreign exchange earnings, tourism could also assist in promoting national unity and mutual understanding through domestic and international travels. If tourism is properly groomed in Nigeria, it will breed peace and unity and many Nigerians will have the opportunity to visit different other states and tribes. This will eliminate conflicts, and reduce tribalism and religious tensions.

Thus, promotes the spirit of oneness and love among citizens of various nations, creates and build a good relationship and united society.

Very importantly, it draws our minds back to our origin from the rapid western civilization and helps preserve the culture and heritage of people.

The preservation and enhancement of the tradition, and native handcraft helps to create distinct local tourism products and this in turn gives way for promotion and awareness of the Nation’s heritage.

Nigeria has great tourism potentials. The awareness and understanding of tourism in the private sector shows that with a well-organized tourism private sector participation, and government realizations of tourism, tourism activities could generate employment, upliftment of social life in rural areas and the government will see reasons to provide the much needed tourist infrastructures for the growth of tourism in our country.

Nigeria is truly endowed with beautiful natural resources relative to other Nations in Africa and even on a global level. These natural resources include; peculiar geomorphologic features, water bodies, wild life and game reserves.

The application and use of computers in various facets of human activities cannot be over emphasized. Since the introduction of the microcomputers in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the world of office automation has continued to evolve with modernization made to the present ones.

Some may wonder why there is a need for a computerized tourism information system. This is because;

o   The world has become a global street. Day by day people engage in more activities on the internet, it is only fair to use the internet facility to make tourism activities more accessible and informative. 

o   If properly designed and implemented, an online tourism system would be more organized, and efficient than a manual filing system.

o   It can also be used to complement the manual system; it can serve as a backup for all information in the files, thereby keeping them safer in the cloud