Tourism and Creative Arts Minister, Catherine Afeku, has responded to claims by some entertainment players that the visit by Hollywood stars to Ghana during the Christmas season was useless.
Hollywood actor, Boris Kodjoe invited over 40 of the world’s renowned celebrities to Ghana to experience the country’s rich culture and history last year.
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They visited various tourist sites in Ghana and took photos of Ghana which gave the country some form of leverage and also aided to feature Ghana on many news portals as one of the best tourism destinations in 2019.
Shortly after the visit, actor Prince David Osei labelled it as useless because in his estimation, industry players should’ve been given the chance to officially welcome and familiarise themselves with the foreign stars.
His view was supported by actress Yvonne Okoro.
But reacting to this on Yvonne Okoro’s cooking show, Madam Catherine Afeku said there was no official agreement between the Tourism Ministry and the Hollywood stars to familiarize with local stakeholders.
According to her, she expected movie actors like Prince David Osei who didn’t see the relevance of the visit to rather go after these foreign stars.
This is what Madam Catherine said when asked about the visit:
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“If you heard, they’re in town what do you do? Don’t sit in your home expecting them to knock on your door because you are in the industry. We need to tell it as it is, they came here on a vacation.”
Explaining the impact of their [the Holywood stars] visit, Madam Afeku said “they sold Ghana through their various social media handles and pages and you [critics] are like they didn’t look for me? Why?” she quizzed.
She continued that “when you go on a vacation you don’t go looking for industry faces. Even in Lagos, you go for your own business and when you take a photo there, so be it. You don’t go looking for Genevieve. It wasn’t an agreement with Creative Arts that when they come they will mingle. It’s good this has been raised so on the next trip if we want them to…,” the Tourism Minister explained.