Managing Seasonality in Wedding Tourism : An Examination of Wedding Planners’ Adaptive Strategies in Lagos, Nigeria

This thesis examines how wedding planners in Lagos, Nigeria, experience tourism seasonality and adapt to seasonal challenges. Using a qualitative research design with semi structured interviews, data were analysed thematically, guided by Organizational Adaptation Theory and the KT Model of Event Management to explore planners’ adaptive responses to seasonal pressures. The findings show that wedding tourism in Lagos is marked by extreme seasonal concentration during festive and dry periods, followed by pronounced off-peak slowdowns. Wedding planners experience seasonality through a combination of environmental conditions, operational constraints, and cultural authority structures that control timing decisions. These factors generate significant pressures related to venue availability, vendor coordination, workload intensity, and income instability. In response, planners employ a range of adaptive strategies, including vendor relationship management, systematic delegation, strategic capacity control, income diversification, and continuous stakeholder negotiation. However, the findings show that planners adaptive capacity is shaped and constrained by cultural expectations, diaspora mobility patterns, informal business practices, and infrastructural limitations, which limit their influence over event timing.The study provides empirical insight into wedding planners’ lived experiences of seasonality within an African urban tourism context. By foregrounding privately organised events and micro-level managerial practices, the study highlights the importance of culturally and rationally embedded forms of adaptation, suggesting that existing models of organisational adaptation and event management require greater contextual sensitivity when applied to highly seasonal event industries.