Tourism Institute Rewards Best Campus And Outstanding Staff Members

 The award is from May 2022 to June 2023.

 The winners will be publicly decorated during the Gala Night of NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival on the 17th of June.

The yearly Best Campus and Outstanding Staff Members award system was introduced by the current Director General of NIHOTOUR, Nura Kangiwa in 2021. The award system is a 12-calendar month performance evaluations matrix that straddles a preceding and a current year.

Lagos Campus emerged as the Over-all Best NIHOTOUR Campus of the Year 2023 headed by the  Coordinator of NIHOTOUR Lagos Campus Mrs. Chinyere Ibeabuchi.

Others include , the SERVICOM Unit Head in NIHOTOUR Abuja office Mrs. Gemma Simon who emerged Best Staff of the Year, and Mr. Haladu Wakili, a staff in the Registry Unit in NIHOTOUR Abuja office, emerged as the Most Dedicated Staff of the Year 2023.

The Director General of NIHOTOUR, Nura Kangiwa, said the winners will be given travel rewards.

Nura Kangiwa had earlier explained to some of the Institute’s top level Management that, NIHOTOUR as a Federal Government parastatal is primarily a public service provider and enabler for the development of Nigeria’s Hospitality and Tourism, communities, particularly personnel and businesses in the industry.

“We are here to serve the needs of the public and, to do our part in building internal processes that encourage staff excellence, improve our zonal operations and maintain sustainable reward systems that keeps all staff productive and motivated.”  He said.

The Director General clarified that, “we need to improve on the country’s tourism industry development support services and administration. My years in the private sector has convinced me that, well-informed and cognately experienced civil servants are naturally more progressive in addressing sector-specific needs and quick to provide intervention services to personnel and businesses in the industry. To these end, among others, I will ensure more NIHOTOUR staff, at the three levels – top, middle and junior levels – are progressively exposed to emerging domestic and international best practises in other leading tourism destinations, through fully-funded trips, as one of the rewards for exemplary work in the Institute.” 

Kangiwa concluded that, “Nigeria is arguably the most resourceful cultural tourism destination in Africa today! Nigeria’s diversity of tribes, are producing internationally-appealing eclectic traditional festivals, fashion trends, musical acts, culinary, and creative cultural arts. These are empirically evident to us all. Moreover, by the Establishment Act of NIHOTOUR, we are duty-bound  to provide improved public services to workers in the industry, stakeholders and other government agencies. Our services should, eventually, crystallise Nigeria’s cultural tourism potential into becoming the most generative cultural tourism economy in the continent.” 

The National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism of Nigeria is established by an Act of Parliament to train, certify and register personnel in Nigeria’s Hospitality, Travel and Tourism sectors.

The DG has also increased the number of on-site NIHOTOUR campuses from 8 to 10, with a promise to further increase the number to 12 by the end of this year 2023.

The newly announced winners of the Best Campus and Most Outstanding Staff Members of NIHOTOUR will be decorated and given their travel reward packages on 17th June 2023 during the NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival gala night at the Abuja International Conference Centre. On the same night, the Institute will also give out multimillion Naira prizes to the top-three culinary schools that won the NIHOTOUR cooking competition held in May 2023 to herald the 3rd NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival.

NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival was first held in June 2021. The food festival, which is  now the fastest growing of such food and culture festivals in Africa, is conceptualised to upskill Nigerian gastronomes and other operators in the Hospitality and Tourism sectors on nitty-gritties of processing, preparation, presentation, packaging and promotion of foods and beverages, especially Nigerian traditional cuisines. The over-riding objective of NIHOTOUR Gastronomy Festival is to keep improving the expertise of personnel in the  hospitality industry and to better position Nigeria as the ‘Mecca’ of Gastronomy Tourism in Africa.