Tourism and Socioeconomic Development in Calabar Municipality

ABSTRACTThis study examines Tourism and Socio-Economic Development in CalabarMunicipality of Cross River State, Nigeria. The purpose is to establish the nexusbetween tourism and socio-economic development. To achieve this, threeresearch hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance.Extant literatures related to the variables under study were reviewed. The studymade use of descriptive survey design in studying the population of interests.Stratified sampling and purposive sampling technique were used to select asimple size of 220 respondents that participated in the study. Data for the studywas generated via primary sources (questionnaire) titled "Tourism and Socio-Economic Development in Calabar Municipality of Cross RiverQuestionnaire" (TSEDCMCRSQ. A research instrument of a 4-point Likert-scale with 12 items questionnaire was constructed and administered to gather theprimary data for the study. The research findings showed that: tourism cansignificantly contribute to infrastructural development in Calabar Municipality ofCross River State, tourism can significantly create employment opportunities inCalabar Municipality of Cross River State and that tourism can significantlyenhance increase in tax revenues in Calabar Municipality of Cross River State.Based on these findings, the following recommendations among others are made:The leadership Calabar Municipality should make adequate investment ininfrastructural development (like; roads, water, electricity) in order to enhance tourismbusiness in the state which will eventually create employment opportunities for theteeming population in the state and also that government should encourage the localtourism enterprises by providing funds to them in form of grants in order to make thestate more economically viable to attract more investors to boost tourism activities in the state.