Tourism is a relevant domain of knowledge that cuts across several boundaries. It is attached to different human needs and wants outside normal work. It provides job opportunities, small-scale businesses for several people with different cultural background.
Tourism turns culture into displayable objects and visit-able places. Through travel programmes and documentaries on television, advertising, promotional brochures and films, tourism has generated a vast and continual flow of images and discourses about other cultures. Accordingly, tourism is crucial to the population and diffusion of an imaginary that views the world as displayed. That world is composed of a „cultural mosaic‟ of familiar ethnic and cultural differences, all of which are thought of in visit-able terms: they appear to reside „in‟ places, where we come to think of as destinations. In this way, tourism helps to circulate a kind of „National geographic‟ perspective on the world, in which selected, highly demarcated cultural identities are expected to be on display in different places.

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From the above, it has been established that tourism enables millions of people to gaze on their culture and other cultures at first hand. It offers „customized excursions into other cultures and place‟ and tourists leave with merchandizing, snapshots and souvenirs that epitomize and evidence the cultural identity they have visited, rather than „dead‟ culture, in the form of stone monuments and empty palaces, tourists today are seeking „live culture‟, in the form of people and their „colorful, customs. On the other hand, tourism enables millions of people to gaze on other peoples culture at first hand, while tourism delivers visitors to a huge range of different destinations quickly and easily, once often in the form of representations than actualities. It is expedient to note therefore that in tourism enclave, historic city centers, museums, theme parks, festivals, heritage sites, monuments and exhibitions, local cultures is displayed and in most cases turns tourism, which consequently promotes and enhances physical and economic growth especially in the rural areas.

TOURISM
Tourism has grown significantly in both economic and social importance, the fastest growing economic sector of most industrialized countries over the past several years, with overwhelming impact on virtually any economic measure, including gross output, value added, capital investment, employment and tax contribution, when nurtured for sustainable national growth, tourism could be described as prime generator of job in the economy and a great stimulus for foreign investors.
It was also defined as the “science, art and business of attracting and transporting visitors, accommodating them and graciously catering for their needs and wants”. This implies that any activity that voluntarily and temporarily takes a person away from his/her place of residence in order to satisfy a need, either for pleasure, excitement, and experience and or relaxation can be termed tourism. Consequently, the history, culture and the people, the preservation and conservation of wide life are among the basic elements of tourism.
CULTURE
Culture is on the other hand, “that complex whole, which including knowledge, belief, art; aw, custom and other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society”. Culture is the way of life of a group of people. It embodies all aspects of life of a group of people including their beliefs, style of life, dress altitudes, and other important attributes, which are unique to, and shared by members of the group.
The importance lies in the fact that it produces the knowledge and the techniques that enable man to survive by physically and socially and to master and control in so far as it is possible the world around him. Unlike other animals, men have few, if any, instinctive skills and instinctive knowledge, which might enable him to sustain himself an in fact the possession of culture, is one of crucial distinction between man and other animals. Also, culture is both learnt and shared. Men do not inherit them during the course of their lives. All aspects of culture are learned from the group into which individual are born and in which they live.

PROMOTION OF CULTURE

Culture, thus, encompasses all man-made parts of the environment and a whole set of implicit, widely shared beliefs, traditions, norms, values and expectations that characterize a particular group of people. It serves several functional purposes in the life of a group, guides social interaction and social relations, the material artifacts and constitutes the basis on which tourism industry is built. It manifests in arts, dance, language, literature, folklore, mores, music, governance, as well as the character of the environment acquired and transmitted through generations. As societies make attempt at cultural preservations, past cultures have survived in contemporary forms and could certainly be observed and used to reconstruct the past.
Therefore, we can admit that cultural heritage comprises the complexity of all those activities of our whether tangible, through, which we express ourselves and our values for other people to appreciate and patronize. The context of promoting these heritages for people to patronize and appreciate their beauty and content is embedded in cultural tourism, and thus an important and sustainable component and strategy for effective rural growth in Nigeria.
The need to preserve these cultural heritages therefore is eminent; not only for protecting and keeping culture for generation to come, but also to enable these cultures contribute to the well-being of the rural communities through tourism. Without mixing words, preservation of culture in Nigeria some part of the world is weak, and thus the need to embrace a more conservative principle and life style in protecting our natural and man-made endowments. Though, the absence of adequate infrastructure and financial backing for large resources of cultural products and personnel may constitute an impediment to cultural heritage preservation. Carelessness, ignorance and illiteracy are also major clog in the wheel of effective cultural heritage preservation in Nigeria rural areas.
TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
Tourism is seen as the best possible and alternative strategy which can be used for promoting many local areas. It is believed that with tourism, there will be tendency for environmental sustainability, more job opportunity, expansion in both public and private investment, provision of infrastructural facilities and economic improvement. The development of tourism in the rural areas is really a great achievement to the local people, in terms of employment opportunity created and avenue for earning additional income. However, the use of local materials and labour in local production is a good illustration of potential for small-scale development of sustainable tourism.
“Tourism is an economic activity of immense global significance”. The tremendous improvement in the global contribution of tourism to the world economy cannot be ignore, no doubt that tourism frequently referred to as the largest industry in the world. However, this tremendous growth in tourism has been anticipated that this growth will continue till foreseeable future.
There is no doubt that many nations has turn out to tapped from the tremendous growth in tourism. Many nations have taking steps to per taking in the sharing of the ever-increasing global tourism market. More so, many developing countries have also joined the race. Foreign exchange earnings, employment opportunity, economic diversification, economic growth, broader economic and social development policy, and other factors are the fundamental justification for the establishment and development of tourism.
PROMOTING CULTURE AND TOURISM DEVELOPMENT
Culture and tourism have a reciprocal beneficial relationship, which can consolidate the impact of attractiveness and competitiveness of the regions and the countries in their development. Culture is a more and more important element of the tourist product, which, also, creates distinctively on an agglomerated market, at a world level, new metamorphoses of the local, regional and national tourist product. At the same time, tourism offers a very important means of consolidation of culture and the creation of incomes which can support and consolidate the cultural heritage, the cultural production and creativeness. The creation of a strong relationship between tourism and culture can help new destinations become themselves more attractive and more competitive as places to live, to visit and to work or to invest in their sustainable development.
The cultural tourism may offer alternative sources of income for the rural localities, cities, areas where the traditional industries have declined and whose economies or local communities have suffered. A flourishing cultural economy may improve the social and economical status of a city and may positively contribute to the life of the local communities.
Though strongly attached to their cultural norms and traditional values, these are special tourist flow gradually embraced contemporary history, the rapid processes of modernization of today's world, globalization and standardization in progress.
Arguably, cultural tourism is a purpose-oriented activity based on individual’s interest and choice. The purpose of visiting any destination depends on the consumption of experiences, services and products available at the site for the tourist. Hence, all tourism and cultural tourism activity involve the consumption of experiences and products. Thus, the purpose of travelling is motivated for learning new cultures, gathering experience as well as exploration. From a more recent perspective, it was observed that there are tourists who travel for cultural tourism purposes and those whom their participation in cultural tourism activities is only but accidental. The accidental participation indicates that their trip to a particular destination was for a different purpose.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, contemporary tourism attractions are typically focused, then, on the experiential destinations in which tourism can sample different socio cultural realities. Tourism offers „customized excursions into other cultures and places‟ and tourists leave with the merchandizing, snapshots and souvenirs that epitomize and evidence the cultural identity they have „visited‟. Rather than dead, in the form of stone monuments and empty places, tourists today are seeking „live‟ culture, in the form of people and their „colorful customs‟. Culture has thus become central to tourism, just as tourism has to culture.