Minister advocates Afro-European partnership to promote tourism
The Minister of Tourism, Culture and the Creative Arts, Mrs. Elizabeth Ofosu-Adjare has advocated a closer collaboration between tourism players in Africa and Europe to accelerate the development of the travel industries on the two continents.
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The Minister, who led Ghana's delegation to the 35th edition of the FITUR International Tourism Fair held recently at Feria de Madrid in Spain, made the call at the Tourism Investment and Business Forum (INVESTOUR) hosted by the organisers of the fair.
Contributing to a panel discussion on the topic, "Investing in human capital", she said such a collaboration will also speed up the tourism investment drives in Europe and Africa.
She said, though African solutions should be devised to solve African challenges, expert technical support and partnerships from developed economies were equally crucial.
The Minister stated that Ghana had already set the pace of utilising continental human resources by approaching Kenya for assistance in the transformation of the Hotel, Tourism and Catering Training Institute (HOTCATT) into a national hospitality academy to help improve human resource capacity and standards.
She said Ghana would also welcome European partnerships and support in other areas.
Tourism Development Plan
Mrs Ofosu-Adjare said in Ghana, a 15-year National Tourism Development Plan is being implemented to put premium on research and human capital development among others.
“In pursuit of this”, she said “Ghana had commenced a process to train about 10,000 lower to middle level manpower to improve service delivery”.
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Some participants and panelists at the forum observed that though there were unemployed graduates all over Africa, there seemed to be deficits in human capacity in the hospitality industry.
They, therefore, called for the sharing of experiences and success models, diversification of product offerings, and value addition to help address the industry's human resource needs.
There was also a suggestion for the organisation of some intensive short courses and training programmes for unemployed graduates who want to pursue hospitality as a profession but lack the requisite educational and technical qualifications.
FITUR is a global meeting point for tourism professionals and the leading trade fair for inbound and outbound Ibero-American markets.
Available statistics indicate that in 2014 9,083 exhibiting companies from 165 countries/regions, 120,231 trade participants and 97,549 people from around the world met at FITUR to transform leisure into business and business into development.
Also noteworthy was the presence of 7,368 journalists from 60 countries, a turnout that demonstrated the importance of FITUR on the international circuit of tourism sector events.