**1. Introduction**

It is no more news that the state or nature of tourist destinations promotes tourist inflows. This is applicable to all kinds of tourist destination not minding the location and/or ownership. Some notable tourism theories, like Sunlust and Wonderlust theory [1], pull and push theory [2] and inner-directed and out-directed theory [3], give further explanations to the position of tourist destinations in the determination of the extent of tourist inflows as a result of tourist choices. The implications being that the destination's image and nature control over 75% of tourist choices to visit or not to visit the destination. Adequate branding and relevant sustainable management practices are among the solutions to sustainable tourism development.

Various kinds of tourist destinations abound, but emphasis here is on rural tourism which has been defined as a kind of tourism experience that has to do with visits to rural communities or villages that are separated from urban areas. Attractions that motivate such tourism experiences include sociocultural life styles and astonishing natural landscapes, among others [4, 5]. Moreover, Nwankwo et al. [6] informed that rural tourism is a motivation for self-development option for those living in the rural areas. This view was also supported by Tsephe and Obono [7] when they gave benefits of rural tourism to include foreign exchange earnings, creation of employment, opportunities for culture exposition and improved infrastructural and superstructural base, among others.

Many rural communities from various geopolitical zones of Nigeria have made frantic efforts to benefit from the gains of rural tourism, through harnessing of various tourism resources that have been lying fallow in their localities. Also many relevant academic researches and media documentations have directed the focus of these rural communities to those areas they have comparative advantage, to generate more tourist/visitors inflows to their communities. Despite these, rural tourism in Nigeria has been faced with some problems over the years, thereby depriving most of these rural communities of the opportunity to maximize the gains of rural tourism to rural development and sustainability. Among the critical aspects of these challenges is the issue of destination crisis that have ravaged the growth and sustainability of rural tourism initiatives in rural areas in Nigeria. However, this study is an attempt to seek for ways of tackling these challenges and to check various crises that have huge negative implication for sustainable tourism development in rural areas. To this regard, this study is aimed at considering the application of three-way destination safety solution to crisis management in rural Nigeria.
