Tourism Industry in a Depressed Economy: Agenda for Firms’ Survival Behaviour

Abstract

The paper examines the survival behavior of firms in the tourism industry in the context of business environmental hostilities of a depressed economy, as the case in Nigeria. It adopts a descriptive and prescriptive approach on characteristics of the tourism industry and also on the depressed state of the Nigerian economy, to prescribe survival behavior of firms. It contended that the tourism industry provides psycho- social luxury, thus almost only attends to the psychological and social ostentability of the customer. Also, it views the depressed economy as characterized by economic hardship, which tends to restrict spending, dominantly on economic rationality. This places the services of firms in the tourism industry on marginal consideration mostly on household spending during economic depression. The attendant survival tendency of the firm thus becomes critical. The paper therefore prescribed a broad spectrum of strategies bordering on cost, price, service and promotion restructuring to enhance firms’ resilience.