By Seun Ibiyemi
The Nigeria Association of Tour Operators (NATOP) has marked the 2026 World Tourism Day with a series of activities focused on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, destination promotion, capacity building and domestic tourism.
In Lagos, nearly 200 tour operators from the South-West Zone gathered at Ziba Beach Resort for a specialised training on artificial intelligence and its application in tour operations.
The programme, organised in line with the 2026 World Tourism Day theme, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism,” was designed to equip operators with digital tools for improving their businesses, creating tourism content and promoting Nigerian destinations.
Speaking at the event, NATOP President, Hajia Bolaji Mustapha, said the association deliberately combined the World Tourism Day celebration with practical training to ensure members gained skills that could improve their businesses.
She said the training was aimed at teaching operators how to use different AI tools to market tours and destinations and communicate Nigeria’s tourism attractions to a wider global audience.
“We want to train members on how to do tour business, know how to promote tourism digitally, using different AI tools and everything so that they will grow their businesses,” Mustapha said.
According to her, the training would enable tour operators to produce stronger digital content and use artificial intelligence to tell Nigerian destination stories more effectively.
Mustapha said the tourism industry was undergoing rapid digital transformation and urged tour operators to adapt to the changing environment.
She noted that content creators were increasingly influencing tourism decisions and argued that professional tour operators could combine their industry knowledge with digital tools to provide more authoritative destination information.
“As tour operators who are willing to tell the good story of our Nigeria, we need to bring ourselves up to speed and align with the digital revolution,” she said.
Mustapha added that operators should use technology to showcase Nigeria’s attractions and enable visitors to discover the country through the expertise of professionals within the tourism industry.
The NATOP president said the choice of Ziba Beach Resort was deliberate, as the association traditionally combines its World Tourism Day activities with visits to tourism sites.
She said the programme provided an opportunity for operators to inspect the resort, including its newly launched third phase, and explore ways of marketing the facility as a Nigerian tourism destination.
Mustapha said the exercise was also intended to help correct misconceptions that could arise from the resort’s name, while demonstrating that world-class tourism facilities exist within Nigeria.
The participants toured the resort’s facilities and used the occasion to assess its potential as a destination that could be promoted to domestic and international tourists.
NATOP Vice-President, South-West, and Chairman of the zone’s World Tourism Day Organising Committee, Mrs Wonuola Olatunde-Lamidi, said the training was necessary because some operators still lacked adequate knowledge of the fundamentals of tour operations.
She identified tour-package development as one of the areas where operators required stronger capacity.
“Many don’t understand the foundation of what it is to create a tour package. And when you have people that are not well-trained in an industry, the industry will not grow,” she said.
Olatunde-Lamidi, who has spent 16 years in the industry, said professional training could increase the earning capacity of operators while improving the quality of services available to tourists.
She cited the evolution of Diamonds and Pearls Travels, which she runs with her husband, from a travel agency into a Destination Management Company (DMC), as an example of how professional expertise and effective destination marketing could transform a tourism business.
According to her, tour operators have significant influence over travellers’ choices because effective marketing can determine which destinations tourists choose to visit.
The World Tourism Day celebration was not limited to Lagos.
In Abuja, the FCT and Northern Zone of NATOP, in collaboration with Naija Adventurers, organised a Tourism Awareness Walk and Hike to the Centre of Nigeria as part of activities marking the occasion.
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The South-South Zone also joined the celebration with a destination tour and other activities designed to promote tourism and encourage members to engage more actively with attractions within their region.
The nationwide activities reflected NATOP’s focus on combining celebration with practical interventions aimed at strengthening the capacity of operators and promoting Nigeria’s tourism destinations.
The association’s 2026 World Tourism Day activities highlighted the growing importance of technology and artificial intelligence to the tourism value chain.
For NATOP, the adoption of digital tools is expected to help tour operators create better content, market destinations more effectively and compete in an increasingly technology-driven global tourism industry.
The association also used the celebration to reinforce the importance of domestic tourism, with operators encouraged to explore and promote Nigerian destinations while positioning themselves as professional guides to visitors seeking to discover the country.
