Abstract

One of the industries with the fastest growth rate is the hospitality and tourism sector. However, in the less developed economies, the hospitality industry has low awareness in the importance of advertising their products and services. Hence, this study was carried out to investigate the visitors’ awareness and perception of advertising the products and services of hotels in the hospitality industry in Akure south, Owo and Ikare Local Government Areas in Ondo State, Nigeria using 600 copies of well-structured questionnaire. Data obtained reveals that 54.7%of the visitors in the hotels were male, 46.7% of them were within the age bracket of 26-33years, all the respondents were Nigerians and 60.8% had tertiary education. 94% of the visitors were aware of marketing in the hotels and majority were aware of promotion, word of mouth publicity, TV/radio publicity, Online/Social media publicity, billboard and handbills. The statements were measured according to their means. The mean score ranged from 4.54 to 4.01, “marketing allows customers to be aware of new services offered” had the highest mean (4.54) while “marketing costs the hotel a lot of money and time” had the lowest mean (4.01). There is a significant relationship between visitors’ awareness of marketing and their perception about marketing (p = 0.00) and there is a significant relationship between the age, place of residence, education and visitors awareness (p > 0.05).

Key Words: Hospitality industry, Tourism, Hotel industry, Marketing Awareness