OUR TOURISM SECTOR NEEDS OFF SEASON REASONS TO VISIT GHANA

Years ago a director of one of the airlines flying to Ghana told me:

“Ghana is not a tourist destination”
Ghana is a family and visiting friend’s destination.

Although there is some improvement since he made this bold statement, due to the real tourist arrivals has grown but that not much has changed.
The great Year of Return campaign turned in to a (not very creative) “milking” cow of return by continuing the same campaign and slogan for “years of Return 2 and 3.

I saw the year of return also as a year during which the African Americans returned after a brief increase in their visits to Ghana in the years 1999 to 2001. Unfortunately that collapsed completely after 9/11.
Currently our new government and newly appointed management of the GTA are trying to pick up where the past government stopped creating “new” reasons visit Ghana.
But until date Family and Friends are still the bulk of “tourist” visiting Ghana.
The Statistics on tourism are not very clear to measure how our real tourism has grown and which activities are raising numbers as a result of activities of our GTA.

The common term used around the world for a tourist visit is also not very helpful:
“Arrivals of tourists at the border refers to the number of international visitors who arrive during a given year in a given country and who are staying at least one night”
Unfortunately that includes all the “family and friends” the airline director was talking about. But It also includes; diplomats visiting or stationed in Ghana, volunteers, foreign aid workers etc.

With that aid workers in war torn areas around the world, or our Cuban doctors in Ghana are counted in the statistics of the number of touristic arrivals. Just like every deported Ghanaian from abroad is registered as a touristic arrival by those standards, after all he arrives and stays more than one night in Ghana.

When the number of visits to Ghana increases because the economic circumstances in Europe, the USA and other parts of the world improve, it results in every Ghanaian visiting Ghana more often. That also increases our tourism statistics well. But these visits have nothing or at least not much to do with our Ghanaian GTA activities to increase tourism.
Christmas and summer holiday seasons are the most expensive periods to visit our further affordable Ghana creating an overprized image of our country.
Every (real tourist) includes his flight and hotel price in his total holiday price.

For that reason alone a high season visit to Ghana doubles in price compared to an off season visit.
Off season tourist visits, create a better and more affordable image for Ghana than holidays during peak season.
The low season starts around the 20th of January until 2nd week of June (with a small price jump around Easter) and returns after the 20th of September until the end of November.

During that period tourist can enjoy great hotel deals and much more affordable flights to Ghana and that’s where and why we need to develop activities and reasons to visit Ghana.
The target group for off season visits are; singles, young professionals, retirees and any other tourist who is not bound by the school and official holidays.

Some of those target groups can be bird watchers and other nature explorers, interested people in African/Ghanaian culture, conferences, back packers etc.
The hotel sector, would welcome every effort to raise their occupancy rates during off and low season simply because the high season prices don’t pay the cost to run annual hotel operations.
But who am I, just a concerned Ghanaian.
Nico van Staalduinen

Nico van Staalduinen, is a graduate of the Hotelschool of Amsterdam with over 40 years hotel and tourism experience in Ghana, The Netherlands, South Africa, France and Germany.