The CEO of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyeman has said that Fitur International Tourism Fair presents an opportune ground for the West African country to sell and promote its tourism offerings and investment opportunities.
Fitur International Tourism Fair which is held in Madrid Spain is a leading event where tourism stakeholders and businesses converge each year to network and drive investments into the global tourism industry.
This year’s is still ongoing having begun on January 22. In an interview with VoyagesAfriq at the event where the Authority has taken a stand at the exhibition grounds, Agyeman said, Fitur helps the country to reach the larger Latin American market while offering a unique networking platform.
“Fitur is also in Madrid which is home to the UNWTO and so in terms of tourism networking, is a place we get to meet the movers and shakers in the industry. And the added advantage of Fitur for us is the event store of where tourism investment products are showcased and discussed and we’ve picked up a few new tricks of the trade coming in to Fitur,” he said.
Akwasi Agyeman with UNWTO Secretary General, Zurab Pololikashvili
He added that the event has facilitated fruitful conversations between Ghana and other West African countries on ways by which they can work together towards an integrated tourism marketing strategy.
“We’ve also had very good conversations with other African countries who are represented here strongly; Cameroon, Cote d’ Ivoire on the West Africa Tourism Project; we believe that multi-destination is the next big thing for tourism. We can work together for all of us to derive the benefits.
During the Year of Return we saw an increasing number of people come to Ghana and wanting to visit Togo, Benin and other places and people who had also wanted to come to Ghana use this same destination as route to the market. So this is the time for us to work very closely together and I will say so far so good, we’ve been very encouraged by the response that we received,” Agyeman stated.
The CEO is appreciative of the support the organisers and the UNWTO have given them to showcase Ghana and offer training to their personnel to build their capacities in the use of ICT tools.
Ghana's Tourism Minister (first from left), Barbara Oteng-Gyasi with other delegates at Fitur
“The UNWTO has also been very accommodating, prior to Fitur, they gave us the opportunity to bring in three of our digital team members for training; digital is the next thing in tourism and we believe that the training they also got will help enhance the work they do on VisitGhana platforms. We thank UNWTO, we thank the organizers of Fitur and we thank the Spanish people for their warm hospitality to us all here in Madrid,” he emphasized.