Analysis of spatial distribution pattern of hotels in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State, Nigeria

The study analysed the spatial distribution pattern of hotels in Port Harcourt Metropolis, Rivers State, Nigeria. Global positioning system was used to capture the coordinates of each hotel to generate the spatial distribution of the hotels and also the pattern was generated by nearest neighbour analysis. Both descriptive statistics were used for the data analysis. The study showed that a total of 148 hotels were found in the study area. The spatial distribution pattern of the hotels expressed in Table 2 was significantly clustered (z= -9.93; p=0.000). The directional ellipse of the distribution was East to West capturing 94 hotels while the standard distance analysis only captured 90 hotels. The mean distance among the hotels was 255.9m. The mean center of hotels is found around GRA and Rumuola. The study concluded that the hotels are concentrated in a particular location and in most of them, the distance among them is close. The study recommended that a GIS database is required for the monitoring and management of hotels with the growing tendency of Port Harcourt Metropolis. Also, more studies should be done on the relationship between the location of hotels and security; and classification of hotels into different classess based on facilities present in each hotel.