Deputy Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Mark Okraku- Mantey, has shared some tips on how Ghana’s hospitality and tourism sector can improve.
Speaking on Friday’s edition of Dwaso Nsem on Adom FM at the newly refurbished Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park, he mentioned four steps as an acronym, MICE.
“In tourism there are four things or strategies that Westerners use to drive the tourism industry.
“Tourist sites are not the things that bring money to the sector. The acronym is MICE. M stands for meeting, I stands for incentive, third stands for conference and the E stands for events. With the MICE, people lobby to have meetings big meetings for their countries.
“I went for a meeting in Madrid and because of the meeting, hotels were fully booked, it’ll affect food, it’ll affect data, I’ll also affect transportation and every sector of the economy that travelers use will generate money.”
He went on, “Incentives has to do with the media doing interviews on tourist sites and the experience. Conferences are also big deals because they involve international bodies like United Nations, World Bank and church conferences. Upon their arrival, you can add incentives like tourist site visits.
“The last one is events. Last year, the President lobbied for the Global Citizen event to take place in Ghana which became a promotional night, televisions globally are focused on Ghana. Events like Afrochella, Afronation, December in Ghana have caused hotels to be fully booked already. The private benefits more than government that lives on taxes.”
The minister emphasized that the Roads Ministry also has a role to play in order for Ghana’s tourism sector to thrive
“Marketing is something we are focusing on doing. Having a small tourist site with adequate advertisement is better than having numerous tourist sites with low marketing.”
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