Mr Emmanuel Frimpong, a Tourism Consultant, has called on the Tourism Ministry and its agencies to decentralize its programmes and activities to the regions, municipalities, and districts.
This, he said, would allow the regions and assemblies to be involved and begin to see tourism as a business worth investing in, to be able to develop more tourism products and services to attract tourists to localities.
Mr Frimpong, President of African Tourism Research Network, noted that even though domestic tourism was playing its role, the authorities must be intentional about replicating most of their programmes and activities at the lower levels.
‘It must be a coordinated effort where a team must be made responsible to spearhead it and it must be monitored and evaluated to see the impact.’
Speaking with the Ghana News Agency on the success of the tourism sector in 2023 and the expectation for 2024, Mr Frimpong, who is also the Chief Executive Officer, Pishon Consult Limited, said 2023 saw some level of improvemen
t over the past few years when COVID-19 was experienced.
He said the sector began to retain its level in 2023 where a lot of events that supported the industry were organized by various stakeholders across the country.
‘Some of such notable events included the presidential summit on tourism, the minister’s stakeholders breakfast meeting, the tourism investment support, the Ghana CARES Obaatampa Programme skills training for frontline industry players, the December in GH events among others.’
Mr Frimpong noted that ‘in short, even though we do not have the data and statistics yet to confirm it, from where we sit, 2023 was a good year for the sector. However, if we are ready to put certain things in place, we would be able to do better in 2024.’
He said Ghana was an expensive destination because of taxes, and imposing more taxes would make us more expensive, ‘So, we must reduce the rate at which we impose taxes and support industry by putting a lot of measures in place to make our natural attractions more c
ompetitive.’
He said in 2024, industry players must also leverage on some of the already existing opportunities that promoted Ghana’s culture, traditions, food, and heritage.
The Tourism Consultant noted that industry players were hoping to see the manifestation of the tourism development plan by the second quarter of the year, saying that, ‘when implemented, it will be a game changer because as a sector, we do not have any official blue print which we are all focusing on to know what to do in the coming years.’
‘Also, customer care and satisfaction are big issues in the industry, we must build the capacity of personnel, know the skills gab, and areas to focus on especially on artificial intelligence, data, digitalization as well as employable skills, and we must be intentional about it.’
Mr Frimpong said the private sector was the engine of growth and it was important to work more closely with the public sector and look at how to collaborate to get the best out of their expertise
‘We must also have a ca
talog of tourism attraction sites and attraction areas in all the regions and districts which must be published, and hardcopies provided at various places where people frequent to have easy access to them.’
Mr Frimpong added that, with 2024 being an election year, industry players must work towards getting more people to come into the country within the first, second and third quarters because of the elections.
‘We look forward to seeing the full implementation of the e-visa or visa on arrival to enable investors come in at all times to grow the economy,’ he said.
Source: Ghana News Agency