Dr. Wanle Akinboboye is the founder of La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort, Ikegun, Lagos and special adviser on tourism to the governor of Ondo State. He speaks with ANDREW IRO OKUNGBOWA on key issues relating to the development of Nigeria tourism industry and challenges of setting up the resort over two decades.
A naturally ebullient personality, a robust intellectual and visionary, Dr. Wanle Akinboboye, could be best described as a man of many parts with artistic and creative ferment, which over the years he has displayed with uncommon touch and passion for his craft. Educated and trained in his craft in the United States of America, Akinboboye who hails from Ondo State, returned to the country at the young and zestful age of 29, full of energy and armed with an uncanny vision of creating a tourism project out of this world -La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort in Ikegun Village, Lagos, a beach resort that is entirely an African themed enclave but enjoys a blend of natural and sophisticated aesthetics -The resort in 2013 was named the best beach resort in Nigeria while in 2014 it was named the best beach resort in West Africa in the annual Africa Travel Award organised by Akwaaba and has since taken the tourism industry and the country by storm through his numerous projects and interventions spanning almost 30 years.
Apart from the resort, he is also the founder of La Campagne Club, Ikeja, Atunda Entertainment and Corporate Guards, Motherland Beckons – a body devoted to the promotion and preservation of African culture and a vehicle, which he has successfully used in bridging the gap between The Diaspora and motherland –Africa.
Akinboboye is also the Ambassador for tourism for the World Conference of Mayors and currently doubles as special adviser on tourism to the governor of Ondo State among others. Birthing La Campagne Tropicana Beach Resort It was the passion of a 29-year-old who wanted to make a difference, who wanted to make a change. In retrospect when I look at it that 29 years boy or that very young boy that came into the forest in 1984, I salute his courage and his ability to do that. I think that if he has realised the kind of issues involved they might not have deterred him but may had slowed him down quite a bit. But I am glad that to a large extent I really didn’t see people then, my focus mainly was what I wanted to do and I didn’t concern myself about what people think but I was more concerned with what I wanted to do. I just came back from the US at the time and a lot of people that I came in contact with –Nigerians, majority of the people; they all had one major problem of why things can’t be done. Everybody you speak to is thinking more of how it can’t be done and they are not looking at the challenges and looking at how to overcome these challenges.
They look at challenges as a stop, they look at challenges as a deterrent and they don’t look at challenges as things that will come up in any endeavour. So, my major focus was on what I wanted to do, I wanted to build an authentic African theme resort with a very strong West African flavour because I believe very strongly that to make tourism happen you got to weave it round your culture so that everybody around that immediate culture can benefit from it and can participate in it.
It is not about when you import other people’s culture and how on a regular basis you try to be a better imitation than the original owners of those ideas that you can begin to start to say that you have achieved something. Success factor Very simple, just decide on what you want to do and focus on it and be prepared for the fact that everybody you come across is going to discourage you not to do it. So once you are prepared for that you just hear it and let it go but your focus must be on what you want to do and believing strongly that what you want to do is important not only for you but for humanity and realising the fact that when you are able to achieve it, when you build it, they will come and when they come you have created a legacy for tomorrow’s people.
Because the platform or the lack of platform that we are standing on today as a people is the doing or undoing of yesterday’s people and the platform or lack of platform for tomorrow’s people is in our hands, today’s people. Challenges facing Nigerian tourism industry Tourism is an industry that doesn’t have an entry level; everybody can get involved in it. So, there got to be a way of regulating it and creating boxes for it and putting people in separate boxes for effective management.
When you have such vast business endeavour without any form of regulation or record processes then everybody is trying to be an expert because of the financial benefits associated with it. So you see someone who has travelled four, five, six times in a year and sees one or two things in his travels then he comes back and tells you that he is a tourism expert and he is out there telling you what you should do.
We lack the basic understanding of how to develop tourism These are the challenges but when it doesn’t occur to you that a particular industry is important the basic needed infrastructure to boost that particular industry would not be put in place because it hasn’t occurred to us. Why do I need to build the road to La Campagne and help Dr. Wanle Akinboboye? What is my business with his business? My business is to govern but if I know that if I build the road to La Campagne or have given electricity to the resort in the past 20 years, the resort would had created employment for more than 1, 000 or 2, 000 people. When I look at the trickledown effect of that opportunity I will rush to build the road. But for me to do that I must have had some kind of experience, I must have that knowledge, and it must occur to me that tourism is important. I must see the trickledown effect. And of course because government is a short term and tourism being a long term, everybody is not particular about focusing on those things that would bring long time glory but rather on the short term glory that the people will see very quickly.
Tourism is critical to our development unless we decide that tourism is critical and we look at it as a major focus that is when we will begin to strategise and then put in place the needed infrastructure. So you have infrastructure challenges that you have to deal with, you have human resources challenges that you have to deal with because it is a new industry and we don’t have a huge bank of knowledgeable people and experience hands. So there is a lot of training, a lot programmes and some processes that you have to be prepared for. Then you have to identify what type of tourism that you want to be known for. Is it cultural tourism? Is it conference tourism? Is it religious tourism? Is it educational tourism? Is it sports tourism? Or is it adventure tourism? You have to determine what you want to do and then look at the best application or the best way to go about it. Because it is not our focus yet but when something is your focus you will not only think about the monetary application of it but you will have to think about how to use what you have to get what you need or what you want.
http://newtelegraphonline.com/wanle-akinboboyeto-make-tourism-happen-weave-it-around-your-culture/
