By Dennis Peprah, GNA
Sunyani, Sept. 26, GNA – Professor Felix
Adebayo Adekoya, a Senior Lecturer at the University of Energy and Natural
Resources, said the tourism sector is Ghana’s fourth largest foreign exchange
earner, fetching the country 2.2 million dollars in 2015.
The figure represents 4.8 per cent of the
Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He said the industry was a key economic
driver, which had huge potentials to speed up rapid socio-economic growth and
development.
Speaking at a symposium in Sunyani to mark the
2018 World Tourism Day on Tuesday, Prof. Adekoya said the industry could
generate and improve on the country’s foreign exchange earnings, create more
jobs and wealth as well as stimulate other sectors of the economy.
World Tourism Day, celebrated every 27th
September around the world, is a unique opportunity to raise awareness on
tourism’s actual and potential contribution to sustainable development.
This year’s celebration would help to put the
opportunities provided to tourism by technological advances including big data,
artificial intelligence and digital platforms on the map of sustainable
development.
The World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) sees
digital advances and innovation as part of the solution to the challenge of
marrying continued growth with a more sustainable and responsible tourism
sector.
The symposium was organised by the Brong-Ahafo
Regional office of the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), on the theme: “Tourism
and the Digital Transformation”.
In 2015 alone Ghana’s tourism sector employed
an estimated 393,000 people directly and indirectly as hotel, restaurant,
travel trade, entertainment, recreational and tourist site managers, Prof.
Adekoya said.
He indicated that Ghana had rich culture,
historical heritages, diverse wildlife, nice tropical climate and coastline
beaches, which could be harnessed to push forward her development agenda.
Prof Adekoya expressed regret that the
country’s tourism sector remained in the dark as successive governments had not
demonstrated serious political will to grow it.
He said with the use of digital marketing
(internet) tools, the country could easily highlight her numerous tourism
potentials, attract investors, and build the sector to boost eco-tourism.
Mr Joseph Appiagyei, the Acting Brong-Ahafo
Regional Director of the GTA, said the Region was endowed with many tourism
attraction sites that could be developed for rapid socio-economic progress.
He said service delivery in the sector had
witnessed sharp and significant improvement and appealed to the media to help
showcase the Region’s potentials to the outside world.
Mr Appiagyei said investing in the tourism
industry had huge gains and advised the private sector to develop the interest
and invest in the sector.
GNA