“We will package festivals to attract patronage’ -Tourism Minister-designate

The Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister-designate, Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, has hinted at plans to package Ghanaian festivals to attract patronage.

There are over 70 festivals celebrated across the country every year, 29 forts and castles and 8 mausoleums but the patronage of these festivals and tourist sites according to a report by the Tourism Ministry is low.

Taking his turn at the vetting committee in parliament, the Minister-nominee proposed partnership with business and advertisement of these festivals as a solution

“We will develop a comprehensive program to market festivals to attract international and local patrons by partnering with hotels, businesses to package it” he said.

Stressing the need to boost domestic tourism, the former minister of Business Development said he has plans of instituting a program to promote corporate tourism.

“The corporate tourism will be a partnership between the tourism ministry and other stakeholders to encourage corporate organizations to visit our tourist sites during their leave days… we will start with government workers and I urge parliament to spearhead this corporate tourism,” he said

He said promoting festivals and tourism sites will not only target the international market but domestic tourism.

“According to the World Tourism Organization 54% of revenue from tourism is domestic and in 2019 about 620,000 Ghanaians moved across in the country”

“Domestic tourism also promotes national cohesion, reduce rural-urban migration” he added.

Reacting to the concerns of the gradual loss of Ghanaian culture in movies and music, the minister nominee said he has plans of building a 20-million-dollar national studio to produce mini-series.

“Without a strong culture and artistic background, inculcating our culture into the youth will be difficult, we are securing a 50 million cedis grant to support players in the tourism sector”. He added.