Ghana has been urged to invest in its tourism sector to shore up revenue for the country.
A Professor of Tourism Management at the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management at UCC, Prof. Issahaku Adam who gave this advice said investment in Ghana’s tourism has been sporadic, inadequate and less targeted yielding no results.
To him, the government’s approach to developing tourist sites is not is not the best.
“When we say we have started investing in products, we then started replicating the same product that we have already. And so you simply just trying to create a situation where you compete within the same destination. Destination Ghana,” he said.
Prof Adam’s assertion hinges on the various walkways that have emerged in some tourist sites across the country.
Now the country has not only Kakum National Park, but also walkways at the Bunso Eco Park, Legon Botanical Gardens, Oti Waterfall, Kintampo Waterfall, and Peninsula Resort at Akosombo, among others.
However, Prof Adams said “Ghana is a destination. Should we be replicating products, or we should be innovating and bringing in different products that can attract additional visitors?
“We are not putting in new products. And when that happens, few people visit it one, two, three times, they get fed up because you go back and it’s the same. And this is the story across all the various storage sites in Ghana” he added.
He, therefore, urged the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture to provide an enabling environment to get the right people to invest in tourism.
He said this can be done by ensuring that the tourism products which are the sites for attraction are improved upon in order for people to visit the site frequently.
Prof. Issahaku Adam spoke to ATL FM NEWS in commemoration of the World Tourism Day Celebration which is marked on September 27 annually.
According to him, the Ministry of Tourism is generating money from the already existing tourist sites in Ghana but no money is ploughed back into improving the tourist sites as many of these sites are deteriorating.
He, therefore, advised the ministry to channel the income into maintaining and improving the tourist sites with new innovations in a way that does not alter the architectural design of the existing ones.
Tourism in Education
Prof. Issahaku indicated that there are several ways to tighten awareness of tourism in Ghana.
He said one is the government deliberately finding space within the Ghanaian curriculum for tourism education.
“…for the fact that you can look at it from the perceptive of tourism being something that is integral to the wellbeing of the people. So even if you take away the economics of it, you can think of it in regards to the well-being; how tourism helps the world and the population, how it helps to get the population to de-stress to help improve the physical and psychological well-being of the people.” he continued.
Read more news here
Source: Linda Afful/ATLFMNEWS
