Women urged to collaborate to promote tourism

Women have been urged to collaborate to promote tourism in the country to create jobs and improve revenue generation for national development.

The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, who made the call in a speech read on her behalf at the launch of Women in Business and Tourism (WIBAT) in Accra, said women could leverage their numbers and expertise to take tourism to the next level.

She said tourism could be the leading source of revenue for the state, if the industry was enhanced, packaged and marketed well.

Harness resources

Mrs Oteng-Gyasi said women needed to pool resources together and play the lead role in the tourism value chain by coming up with innovative ways of attracting investors to the sector.

She said if women increased their productivity in tourism and other sectors of the economy, they could contribute effectively to the development of the country.

"We (women) have important roles to play.

We have to work assiduously across the country to achieve those objectives.

"We have to work hard to achieve the best.

We need to build leadership capabilities. We have to work hard to produce more to contribute to the development of the country", Mrs Oteng-Gyasi added.

Partnerships

The President of WIBAT, Ms Eunice Ogbugo, said the formation of WIBAT was to form partnerships to empower women in businesses to promote tourism.

She said the idea was to link engineering, construction and other professions to the tourism sector to accelerate its growth in Ghana and other African countries.

Ms Ogbugo said WIBAT also aimed at encouraging women to venture into owning their own airlines, hotels and other prominent businesses in the tourism industry.

She said although the airline and hotel sectors were capital intensive, women could own them, if they showed commitment and pooled their resources and capacity together.

Ms Ogbugo also mentioned agriculture tourism and herbal tourism as some of the areas that WIBAT would package and promote to attract more tourists to the country.

"We are here to change the status quo. We want tourism to become the number one revenue earner.

We have to open up our hearts and minds to expand our tourism base to attract revenue", she said.

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Private Enterprise Foundation (PEF), Nana Osei Bonsu, said PEF was also looking at ways to improve the country's tourism industry.

He, however, expressed the joy that women had taken the lead role to harness and promote the sector.