Indigenous Snacks And Their Acceptability By Tourists At Some Selected Tourist Centres And Hotels In Southwest, Nigeria

The recent growth of local snacks suggests the need for development of snacks and their contributions to the consumers need. Whilst serving as snack and as convenience foods, they can also be helpful in reducing post-harvest food loses. Therefore, this study aims at assessing the indigenous snacks and their acceptability by tourists at Tourist centres and Hotels in Southwest, Nigeria. Multistage sampling technique was adopted. First, four States were purposively selected from the six States in the South-West, because the four indigenous snacks in the study are predominantly found in those States, and these are: Oyo – Akara Ogbomoso, Ogun – Kokoro Egba, Osun – Dodo Ikire, Ekiti– Aadun. Four Hotels and four tourists' centres where tourists frequently visited and lodged were systematically and randomly selected in each of the sampled states. Ten tourists as well as ten Caterers were interviewed in each Hotel and Tourist centres. In all, 80 respondents (40 tourists, 40 caterers) were interviewed in each Tourist centres and Hotels in each group to make 320 respondents (i.e. 10x4x2x4). The tourist's centres and Hotels that were used previously informed through reconnaissance survey. Data collected from this study were analysed using descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, percentage) and inferential statistics. At The tourism sites, level of acceptability of Akara Ogbomoso was (12.8%), Kokoro Egba (32.2%), Dodo Ikire, (52.6%), and Aadun(92.1%), respectively. Only 10.5% (2) of the food vendors are still actively involved in the tourism activities program while 89.5% (17) are not active. Also, 23.8% (5) are active and 76.2% (16) members are not active. Furthermore, 43.8% (7) are still active while 56.3% (9) are not active. With increasing industrialization and urbanization efforts are presently geared towards the development of large-scale factory production facilities for these indigenous snacks where the quality of the finished product will be assured.