Journal of Agriculture and Social Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2018 1 FACTORS DETERMINING COMPETITIVENESS OF BEACH TOURIST DESTINATION IN LAGOS, NIGERIA ADELEKE, BOLA OLUSOLA AND OGUNSUSI, KAYODE Department of Transport and Tourism Studies, Redeemer’s University, Ede, Osun State, Nigeria Corresponding author’s Email: adelekeb@run.edu.ng ABSTRACT The comparative advantage of beach tourism in Nigeria can be exploited using effectiveness of destination management of beach tourism destinations to tourists’ needs as key factors in drawing tourists. Structured questionnaire was used to gather data from staff and tourists to Lekki Beach and Elegushi Beach.. Effectiveness of destination management from staff and responsiveness of tourism destination to tourists needs from tourists was measured. Data were analysed using multiple regression analysis and ANOVA to predict the efficiency of destination management. Results showed that 73% and 35.4% tourists had tertiary education in Lekki Beach and Elegushi Beach respectively, with 52% and 53% of the tourists being females in Lekki Beach and Elegushi Beach respectively. Most (94%) of the tourists were Nigerians in Lekki Beach, while all tourists to Elegushi Beach also Nigerians. From the perspective of staff, the management of Lekki Beach as a destination was not as effective in taking care of tourists’ needs as Elegushi Beach. The response variable predicted the effectiveness of destination management by the educational status of staff better in Elegushi Beach (R 2 = 66.9%) than Lekki Beach (R 2 = 33.3%). From the perception of tourists, none of the two destinations was responsive to the needs of tourists. But, Lekki Beach has the propensity to perform better as the percentage variance of prediction (R 2 ) was explained by 48.4%.The effectiveness of beach tourist destination is a function of the quality of service that can be used to attract local and in particular international tourists. Keywords: Beach, Competitiveness, Effectiveness, Responsiveness, Tourism INTRODUCTION Nigeria is blessed with arrays of potentialities such as natural features like beaches and land formations, manmade creativities and artifacts and divergent heterogeneous culture for the development of the tourism industry, but, the industry has not witnessed significant growth (Ndanusa et al., 2014). The investment environment in tourism in any country is influenced by many factors among which are the degree to which government agencies seek to facilitate or inhibit private investment in the industry, and the laws and regulations that impact access to capital and credit. For the political development of tourism, government is the principal actor (Bramwell, 2011). According to Hall (2005) government has seven functions in tourism development: coordination, planning, legislation and regulation, entrepreneurship, stimulation, social tourism, and public interest protection roles.However, the political motives for controlling tourism has been too subtle over the years (Kim et al., 2007), especially with regards to beach tourism in Nigeria. This poor political will can be complimented if the government will allow Foreign Direct Investment in the tourism industry in Nigeria.Davidson and Sahli (2015) provided empirical evidence of the relative benefits of foreign investments, in which poverty alleviation, employment