We, at Tectono
Business Review,
recently stumbled on United Nation World
Tourism Organisation’s (UNWTO) website to check out some of the programmes
it has lined up for the last quarter of the year. In the coming months, the
apex tourism body will be organizing a Wine
Tourism Conference in collaboration with the Georgian National Tourism Administration.
The press release on its website
stated: “Georgia’s unique
winemaking traditions date back 8,000 years and are considered by UNESCO as
intangible heritage, making the country an ideal host for the Global Conference
on Wine Tourism. The country’s recent success in attracting a growing number of
tourists and its development of tourism products, branding and marketing,
combine to present an excellent platform for sharing best practices, experience
and knowledge.”
Let us ask this question. Which wine is better than our locally tapped palm wine? If
you have ever been served palm wine in any part of Nigeria especially the western
and the eastern regions, you would be able to testify that nothing beats the
taste of our freshly tapped unadulterated palm wine. On the other hand, what
beats our imagination is the fact that we’re not doing anything grand with this
quintessential alcoholic beverage beyond just consuming it locally and may be a
few exportations.
We can still do so
much more. And surprisingly, there is a huge market for this natural product
abroad. The revenue generated every year locally is nothing compared to what we
can earn as a country if we intensify exportation of this product. The product
has the potential of generating millions of dollars every year if done properly
and supported with the necessary marketing efforts. In order to galvanize the
exportation of the local palm wine, Tectono Business Review along with some international
trade scholars and professionals with many years of practical experience have packaged
a book that will help budding exporters to avoid being defrauded in the course
of export business. It teaches export operations, export
management, export documentations, methods of payment is export business, among
others. It is a compilation on all the steps palm wine exporters should follow
from the point of packaging the palm wine to the point of payment. To read it,
click:
It is a course of wisdom to
create festivals or conferences that will bring tourists from other countries
to come into our country, considering the fact that we’re at a point where
growing our hospitality and tourism industry is especially important.
Organizing an annual Palm Wine Festival, or something of that sort will boost
the inflow of tourists into our country which will directly contribute to the
economy. For instance, more jobs will be created, more hotels will experience
increase in patronage, airlines will make more sales and several other
attendant benefits. A typical festival will need about three to six months to
plan and will gulp between N4m – N10m. But the ROI will likely triple the
expenditure and once this becomes a yearly event, an additional source of
income will definitely emerge.
Beyond hosting a palm wine
festival or conference or whatever nomenclature we eventually come up with, I
think it’s also important for public private partnership to promote, on a large
scale, the exportation of unadulterated palm wine to neighbouring countries and
major European countries. We stand to benefit immensely from its export.
We only need to get the packaging
right and voila, the orders will start coming in. However, before we start
intensifying commercialization of this product, local promoters should make
conscious effort to get as many Nigerians as possible to start making demands.
Thankfully, e-commerce has changed the way everything is done. It’s not
improbable for a seller to open a platform on any of the online marketplaces
and support it with appropriate publicity. We will go beyond local consumption
to selling to other continents. But first, we need to grow local demands for
the product.
The journey to building our
country to Africa’s number one tourist destination is filled with many road
bumps. But every step we take should always be in the right direction. Else,
things might just fall apart.
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