Özet:

Osun Osogbo festival is one of the biggest art festivals in Nigeria with over 235, 518 tourist visits in 2014. The purpose of this study is to generate data on the tourists’ perception of Osun Osogbo Festival in Osogbo, Osun State Nigeria.  Based on the population of 199, 860 tourist visits at Osun Osogbo festival in 2013, Krejcie and Morgan sample size table was used to select 768 tourists/respondents. Likert questionnaire were used to elicit data from the respondents.  Descriptive statistic was used to describe the characteristics of respondents and analyse the tourists’ perception of the festival.  The findings from data analysed suggest that the trend of domestic and international tourist visits in the past ten years for the festival had shown a consistent increase since 2004 except in 2007 and 2008 and continue to increase up to 2013.  This is an indication that the tourists are satisfied with traditional, historical and authenticity features of the festival.  Also, findings from the study revealed that the tourists are not satisfied with the number of toilets at Osun Sacred Grove, crowd control of visitors during the festival, medical personnel to cater for visitors during the festival, etc.   In view of the findings of the study, the following recommendations are suggested; provision of more toilets at Osun Sacred grove, Osogbo Heritage Council to recruit festival guides to help control the huge crowd at the festival, the Government of State of Osun in conjunction with Red Cross Society should engage adequate medical personnel to cater for medical needs of visitors at the festival, etc.Keywords: Festival, Perception, Positive, Tourists

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