A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF AIR TRAVEL AND TOURISM IN PORT HARCOURT AND MURTALA MUHAMMED INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS

Thesis Overview

<p> </p><div><b>INTRODUCTION</b></div><div><br></div><div>Over the years, travel has been essential since the history and origin of man. People have travelled over time for different purposes and motives which include events, pleasure, relaxation, discovery, exploration, as well as getting to know and appreciate other cultures. Travel and exploration are basic to nature (Walker and Walker, 2011:14). Travel is the movement of people or objects (such as airplanes, boats, trains, and other conveyance) between relatively distant geographical locations.</div><div><br></div><div>In the words of Ashamu (2007:19), Travel is as old as mankind, and differs from tourism. He further explained that the evolution of travel leads to tourism. Travel may occur by human-powered transport such as walking or bicycling, or with vehicles, such as public transport, automobiles, trains and airplanes (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/travel). Reasons for travelling include recreation, tourism or vacationing, research travel for the gathering of information, for holiday to visit people, volunteer travel for charity, migration to begin life somewhere else, religious pilgrimages, business travel, and other reasons such as to obtain healthcare services among other reasons. Travel may be local, regional, national (domestic) or international.</div><div><br></div><div>From the prehistoric period to the Neolithic age precisely between 3000 and 4000 B.C, people travelled across paths, fields, landscapes and forest, in search of survival and basic necessities of life. Wheel and sailing vessels were invented and built in Egypt, travelling became much easier (Ashamu, 2007:20). He further opined that travelling is an adventure and all travels before Industrial Revolution was largely a matter of pilgrimages. This simply indicates that from time immemorial, man has been travelling from one place to another in search of food, shelter, learning new skills and things. In fact travelling as we know is part of education.</div><div><br></div><div>However, the terms ‘travel’ and ‘tourism’ are often interchanged within the published literature on tourism, but they are normally meant to encompass the field of research on human and business activities associated with one or more aspects of the temporary movement of persons away from their immediate home, communities and daily work environments for business, pleasure or personal reasons (Chadwick 1994:65) cited in Page and Connell (2006:11). Tourism is an integral part of life that involves the temporary movement of people out of their homes for a limited time frame. The United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) sees tourism as the process whereby people travel to and stay in places outsides their usual environment for not more than one conservative year for leisure, business, and other purposes (Walker and Walker, 2011:7). This simply means that tourism and travel connote the same thing.</div><div><br></div><div>Having noted this, it is then appropriate to carry out a research on the relationship between air travel and tourism with the aim of laying much emphasis on the Lagos and Port Harcourt international airports in Nigeria using a comparative approach. Owing to the fact that the two airports under study were commissioned just about the same time and have been operational for over 30 years now, it is therefore important to ascertain their contribution to tourism development in the country and their relevance to international tourists. On the other hand, enabling travel is an essential criterion for tourism; roads, cars, aircraft and airports are all needed to permit the easy passage of tourists from home to destination and back again (Page and Connell, 2006:375). This is an indication that the two international airports under study have a major role to play in tourism development and its growth in Nigeria, particularly to international tourists. Air travel is a common means of transport. Worldwide, over one billion people (one fifth of the world’s population) now travel by air. Airports require expanse of land in order to operate safely and efficiently (Page and Connell, 2006:375). According to Cooper et al (2005:480), travelling by air is probably the most important transport innovation of the twentieth century. It has enabled the transportation of passengers in the shortest time and has boosted the demand for long haul trips.</div> <br><p></p>