A tourist attraction is a place of interest that tourists visit, typically for its inherent or an exhibited natural or cultural value, historical significance, natural or built beauty, offering leisure and amusement.
Places of natural beauty such as beaches, tropical island resorts, national parks, mountains, deserts and forests, are examples of traditional tourist attractions which people may visit. Cultural tourist attractions can include historical places, sites of significant historic event, monuments, ancient temples, zoos, aquaria, museums and art galleries, botanical gardens, buildings and structures (such as forts, castles, libraries, former prisons, skyscrapers, bridges), theme parks and carnivals, living history museums, public art (sculptures, statues, murals), ethnic enclave communities, historic trains and cultural events. Factory tours, industrial heritage, creative art and crafts workshops are the object of cultural niches like industrial tourism and creative tourism. Many tourist attractions are also landmarks. But sports events such as a soccer game, Formula 1 race or sailing regatta can also attract tourists.
The Ikogosi Warm Springs is a tourist attraction located at Ikogosi, a town in Ekiti State, southwestern Nigeria. Flowing abreast the warm spring is another cold spring which meets the warm spring at a confluence, each maintaining its thermal properties. These attributes make the spring a tourist attraction in Nigeria. Research suggested that the warm spring has a temperature of about 70°C at the source and 37°C at the confluence.
In 1952, Southern Baptist missionary, Rev. John S. McGee, from his mission base in the nearby Ekiti town of Igede, went to the source of the hot and cold springs, about which he had heard from the Ikogosi people. Initially, he was discouraged from doing this, for reasons of the tradition he had heard from the local residents, which was that nobody should ever visit the source of these two streams, because of the idea that to do so would be to invite death from the supernatural forces that were responsible for this strange, and most unusual, feature of nature. In spite of these “warnings,” Rev. McGee made his way through the bush/forest, up the hill to the source of the two side-by-side springs. According to Rev. McGee’s later brief, written account, “After seeing it, I felt that it could be used for a good purpose. I discussed the possible use of it with some of the Mission and (Nigerian Baptist) Convention friends. With the growing interest of Royal Ambassador work, and youth work, we felt that it could best be used by building a Youth Camp. I took it up with the Ekiti Association and we decided to build a camp for our R.A.s and G.A.s. The land was secured through the Convention.
The Okomu National Park, formerly the Okomu Wildlife Sanctuary, is a forest block within the 1,082 km2 (418 sq mi) Okomu Forest Reserve in the Ovia South-West Local Government Area of Edo State in Nigeria. The park is about 60 km (37 mi) north west of Benin City. The park holds a small fragment of the rich forest that once covered the region, and is the last habitat for many endangered species. It continues to shrink as villages encroach on it, and is now less than one third of its original size. Powerful corporations are involved in plantation development and logging concessions around the park, which also pose a threat.
The park holds a remnant of the Nigerian lowland forests that once formed a continuous 50–100 km (31–62 mi) wide belt from the Niger River west to the Dahomey Gap in Benin. To the south and southeast the forest was separated from the coast by mangrove and swamp forests, while to the north it merged into the Guinean Forest-Savanna Mosaic ecoregion. Human pressure is not new. In the Okomu park there is an extensive layer of charcoal and pottery below the forest, indicating that it was cleared and then regenerated over the last 700 years. By the start of the 20th century the forest survived only in disconnected blocks, which were under intense pressure from human activity.Khaya senegalensis, or African mahogany. This specimen is growing further inland, near Mount Tenakourou, Burkina Faso, in a savannah region.
The 200 km2 (77 sq mi) wildlife sanctuary, a rainforest ecosystem that is the habitat for many endangered species of flora and fauna, was gazetted from the Okomu Forest Reserve in 1935. A survey of southwestern forests in Nigeria in 1982 led to a recommendation for a determined effort to conserve the sanctuary. The state government formally defined the sanctuary in 1986, with an area of just 66 km2.The Nigerian Conservation Foundation (NCF) took over management of the sanctuary in 1987, and extended it to 114 km2 (44 sq mi) by adding a 1.6-kilometre-wide (1 mi) buffer zone.
The Bina Footprint (or Dauda Woyaba) is a small tourist attraction in Lapai, Nigeria showing a footprint on top of a rock.
According to the local legend, it is a footprint of a man called Dabo in a small village 3 km from Muye area, Niger State. In a report stated that Dabo step on top of the rock with his left foot on his way from Bina Village to Gulu area to performed ablution for prayers and later he migrated to Kano, but before he left he built a Mosque at the place and lives in there for some times before leaving to another geographical location and till now the print still exist on the top of the rock