Hospitality Industry and Socio-Economic Sustainability of the Host Communities in Ondo State, Nigeria

The study explores the social, economic and stakeholder theory to expound on the benefits that are derivable by the community that play a host to hospitality facilities. The study aims to identify the socio-economic impacts of the hospitality industry on the sustainability of host community in Ondo state, Nigeria. To achieve the objective, the study used a self-administered questionnaire and opted for a descriptive research design. The researcher administered 367 questionnaires to respondents from five hotels each from the three senatorial headquarters of Ondo state. Three categories of respondents; guests, hotel staff and residents of the selected communities were chosen randomly, and only 355 questionnaires were returned. The data were analyzed using multiple regression to test the study hypotheses. The study provides insight and understanding of the socio-economic advantages of the hospitality industry to the sustainability of the host communities. Findings indicated that the hospitality industry contributes immensely to the socio-economic sustainability of the host communities. Additionally, A p-value < 0.05, provides evidence that the coefficient is different to 0. ECO (t-value= 2.567, > 1.96; p =0.011, < 0.05), SOC (t-value= 5.633, > 1.96; p =0.000, < 0.05) are all significant predictors of host communities' sustainability since their t-value was within the thresholds of greater than or equal to (>=) 1.96 and p-value was less than 0.05. Previous studies in this area are limited, making this study particularly novel. Thus, this study represents one of the initial attempts to evaluate the contributions of the hospitality industry to host community sustainability.