Well-wishers, stakeholders, and travel lovers convene today to officially celebrate the 42nd United Nations World Tourism Day in Bali, Indonesia. The festival is marked every year on the 27th of September, and showcases reviving themes with this year’s being “Rethinking Tourism”.
The General Secretary of the UNWTO gives meaning to this year’s theme to say “Rethinking one of the world’s major economic sectors will not be easy. But we are already well on the way. The crisis has inspired and catalyzed creativity. And the pandemic accelerated the transformation of work, bringing both challenges as well as enormous opportunities to ensure even more people get to benefit from tourism’s restart”.
Rethinking to realign tourism would mean that we actively elect to change the way of doing things. We need to rethink sustainable jobs, inclusion, connecting communities, and professional ethics to make the most.
Ghana’s version of the event will be a joint host in Damango, Jirapa, and Wa in the Northern region respectively. Tourism in Ghana has the legacy of being a buoyant economic sector.
Tremendous opportunities exist ranging from the roadside bazaar events to the airport lounge through to the “trotro” driver right down to souvenir sellers and homestay providers.
According to Statista, “In 2020, the travel and tourism sector in Ghana contributed nearly 1.9 billion U.S. dollars to the country’s Gross Domestic Product. This decreased compared to the 3.7 billion U.S. dollars registered in the preceding year”.
The grim reality though, the COVID-19 crisis has caused a lot of damage to the travel and tourism sector and things are slowly getting to recover.
However, the Tourism Industry in the world and Ghana Tourism Authority don’t seem to renege on building back better.
The clarion call for new ways of tourism is the order of the day, to create better opportunities, and harness the potential to better place tourism in Ghana.
Current programs led by Mr.Akwasi Agyeman at the Ghana Tourism Authority such as the “Year of Return”, “Beyond the Return”, and “Festival of Cultures” have all become important milestones.
To be significant, if you may, tourism communications must be accorded serious attention. Information sharing expect to be multimedia based coupled with state-of-the-art marketing strategies.
Realistically sort out fake tourist guides, curtail overpricing, efforts to build transport infrastructure, heighten media leverage, improve substandard customer care through regular training programs, and improve visa facilitation to make the rethink count.
Elsewhere, tourism actors must seek to focus on cheap activity plans to inspire domestic travel. Service providers ought to guarantee seamless experiences that will promise a comeback.
The way forward however is, growth and change. Fighting for the art of relevance in an often competitive tourism space will mean Ghana to rethink and proffer action plans for the travel and tourism sector.
Strategic Marketing Plan, and Tourism Infrastructure Development Plan to make Ghana a proud tourism hub for vacationers may begin to be seen in the spectacles of priority.
Good one