ABSTRACT
The objective of the preparation of any tourism development master plan is to provide a guide for a short, medium and long term development framework of the sector. Hence the viability of the plan is explained by the success of the implementation programme and by extension, describes the performance of the industry. In this study, a critique of the implementation of the Abuja tourism development master plan was carried out. Observations have indicated that, important components of the plan have not been implemented. This was explained by the outcome of the assessment which shows that, physical development and upgrading has scored 0.23, marketing and promotion has scored 0.19 and events products has scored 0.20, while the overall score of the implementation programme was 0.62 points and this indicates failure of the plan implementation. Several factors were identified explaining the reasons for the failure of the plan implementation; these include: poor identification of potentials, lack of private sector involvement, inadequate funding, technical shortcomings, shortcomings associated with planning and implementation strategies, institutional constraints of policy and laws, inadequate publicity and poor advertisement. The study concluded with recommendations which include: the need to review the tourism master plan, provision of adequate funding, formulation of Abuja tourism policy and enactment of tourism laws; these would further enable tourism planners, policy makers and private sector contribute immensely to the improvement of the planning and development of tourism sector in the F.C.T.