Oyo State is endowed with a wide variety of rich natural resources and cultural features that can be productively utilized for its tourism development. These include a variety of tourism attraction that has historical, cultural and artistic appeal. There is currently one nomination for in Oyo State for the award of UNESCO heritage site, the old Oyo National Park which has been nominated since 1995. In general, tourism in Oyo State (including hotels and restaurants) contributes 0.48% to the State's GSP, which translated to about $9.6 million in 2011. Tourism in Oyo State has recently been recognized as a huge opportunity especially with the discovery of new tourist sites which could lead to more revenue for the State. The tourism sector in Oyo state has huge potentials yet unexplored, which if fully supported, can contribute significantly to the economic diversification which will definitely lead to economic growth, reducing poverty, improving natural resource management, conserving biodiversity, employment generation, empowerment, community development, among others. Oyo state is endowed with a lot of these potentials that will be converted into tourism destinations. Similarly, the tourism sector can serve as a magnet for foreign direct investments and affords Oyo State the opportunity to attract inward direct investment both for soft and hard tourism infrastructures.

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