GHANA'S TOURISM DREAM (1)

Last Wednesday, the Ghana Tourist Board launched an ambitious tourism marketing strategy aimed at making Ghana the most preferred tourism destination in West Africa. 

Taking off this year through 2012, the strategy is to brand Ghana as the Cultural Capital of West Africa (it does not say so explicitly, though), using the tag-line, “Ghana: Culture, Warmth and Much More'.

By the end of the campaign period in 2012, Ghana hopes to have shot past Senegal as the most preferred tourism destination in the sub region, attracting one million visitors annually, up from the present 600,000.

As all the speakers at the launching ceremony acknowledged, the task is an enormous one, and it will require dipping deep into our resources to achieve the target. Difficult, yes; but from what the Times has witnessed over the past 20 years (that is, since 1985), the target is achievable.

In 1985, the then government listed tourism as one of the five key areas of economic activity. From that time, tourism development has never looked back.

From government and from the private sector, a lot of resources, energy and ingenuity have been invested in the sector.

It is recalled that it was out of that strategy that Ghana started attracting the kind of investment that has culminated in the current array of multi-star hotels, starting off with Novotel Hotel.

This was followed by the return of all the major airlines, many of which had boycotted Ghana in the country's time of economic crises. Today, these major airlines are doing daily flights into and out of Ghana

Again, it is the result of the 1985 tourism policy boost that today, the country boasts of the Kakum forest project, notably the walkway that has become a world attraction.

The three major forts were also adopted by the UNESCO and designated World Heritage Sites.

It was an effect of the 1985 policy boost that since 1990, Ghana has been a major participant at the World Tourism Fair and Exchange, in Berlin and London, respectively.

The need to make an impact at such fairs propelled the private sector participants from Ghana to produce slick, internationally accepted brochures.

The period also saw the birth of Panafest and Emancipation, which placed Ghana at the centre-stage in the travel plans of African Americans.

Thankfully the immediate past political administration continued from where the NDC One government left off in tourism promotion.

Thus was born the Joseph Project as part of Panafest/Emancipation; the Paragliding event at Kwahu, among others.

What gives the Times hope for the future of tourism in Ghana is the rise of the private sector, under the umbrella of TOUGHA.

It is not for nothing that the World Tourism Organisation has chosen Ghana to host, as the focal point, this year's World Tourism Day celebration.

The challenge of hosting the world, coupled with the immediate task of presenting Ghana to the world via the visit of the most popular President of the world, America's Barack Obama, puts a lot of pressure on the Ministry of Tourism and the Ghana Tourist Board.

It is a task in which they cannot afford to under-perform:they know too well that the future of the country's tourism dream hinges on these two events.