GHANA is sitting on a tourism goldmine, so stopping at concerts and nightlife means the country is leaving money on the table, spoken word and creative arts advocate, Oswald Okaitei, has said.
He argues that education, health, culture and heritage all carry real economic weight that Ghana isn’t tapping into.
According to him, although Ghana had an abundance of tourism assets, the country continued to focus on only a fraction of what could attract visitors and generate revenue, thereby limiting the economic benefits of the sector.
“Tourism is basically the business of marketing what a country has, such as its people, culture, heritage, attractions, landscapes, experiences and hospitality to visitors for economic gain,” Oswald told Graphic Showbiz in an interview on Tuesday, August 25.
He said Ghana's tourism strategy must move beyond the popular association of tourism with recreation, leisure and entertainment.
“It is important to note that tourism is not only about recreation/leisure: tourism is more,” he said.
Concerts and entertainment events are increasingly woven into tourism promotion initiatives, including efforts under the Black Star Experience.
While acknowledging the value of Ghana's creative and cultural offerings, he said the country's tourism potential was much broader and should not be confined to entertainment-driven experiences.
He cited Cuba's medical and wellness sector as an example of how countries could turn specialised national assets into tourism opportunities.
“In Cuba, healing/medicine stands as one of their greatest tourism capital. Thus, one of their tourism drivers is people who seek to heal/wellness or people who seek to learn their art of medicine/healing,” he said. (Read Tourism Ministry must look beyond culture – Oswald Okaitei)
Ghana, he noted, could similarly leverage its education sector, pointing out that foreign students already travel to the country to pursue their studies.
“Ghana is also noted to offer one of the finest educations in the sub-region, and thus, there are ‘fee-paying’ foreign students who come to the motherland for educational purposes—educational tourism in focus,” he said.
For Oswald, such examples demonstrate that Ghana's tourism industry has been operating with too narrow a definition of what constitutes a tourism product.
“Considering the vast gift our beloved country has, we have only restricted our net to a small fraction of what we must exploit so far as tourism is concerned; then we must wake up and open up the harvesting net,” he said.
