Are we ready for the tourism windfall?

By Kofi Akordor
In the coming days, weeks and months, our country will be playing host to several visitors and international events, which makes it an important place to harvest windfalls from tourism. Coming close is the arrival on Friday, of President Barrack Obama, the third US President to visit this country over the last 11 years. Bill Clinton was here on March 23, 1998 followed by George W. Bush, who arrived here on February 19, 2008 for a three-day visit.
In September, Ghana will play host to the World Tourism Day, an event that will certainly record an inflow of visitors mostly in the hospitality industry. In the past few years, our country has been privileged to be venues for a number of important and significant international events.
In 2007, we celebrated our 50th anniversary in a manner that gave no credit to that epoch and historic event. It was as if there was nothing worth celebrating. In July of the same year, the country hosted the African Union Summit at which the African leaders made high-flying statements about continental union. In 2008, we were again lucky to host the 26th MTN Africa Cup of Nations.
These are high-profile international events that could have easily been utilised to advertise the country’s vast potential assets. But did we measure up to the challenge? Even though official sources continue to tout tourism as the fourth biggest foreign exchange earner, the tourism sector is woefully underdeveloped. We could not take advantage of these events to make foreign cash because of poor infrastructure.
The first visible sign of our inadequacy is the poor road network from the capital to the places of leisure and pleasure. Apart from the Elmina and Cape Coast castles that can now be accessed by a fairly good road, most of the places that will be the tourist’s haven are ‘hidden’ because it takes a lot of courage and determination to reach them.
The tourist’s disappointment could only be experienced to be appreciated after reaching his/her destination only to realise that apart from what nature has provided the people of Ghana have not provided anything for their comfort and entertainment. Pour souls, they would neither get a decent place to retire their worn-out bodies nor a nice place to relax with friends.
The emptiness at Dodi Island is something that intrigues me. This is a place that is very close to Accra and has money-spinning potentials but remains untapped. The dream of many who have heard of the place is to pay a visit and many social groupings and corporate entities continue to organise excursions for their members to Dodi Island. But the high expectations immediately fizzle out after the desolation hit them in the face. Only the boat ride offers something interesting.
Can we picture how Dodi Island would be like at the weekends if the place was developed with hotel facilities, recreational and amusement facilities for adults and children? The place would have been breezing with visitors, both local and foreign, who would want to savour the beauty of the Volta Lake.
It appears we still think that there cannot be anything more important beyond raw cocoa beans, raw timber and gold ore. Tourism can easily transform the economy of this country and change the lifestyle of our rural communities.
We don’t develop tourism just by holding workshops for chop-bar operators in Accra. The greater number of tourists will want to visit the tourist sites buried deep in the country and not walking the streets of Accra which, apart from its people, have nothing to offer the American or European.
We have heard a lot about the Kakum National Park, the Mole Game Reserve, the Paga Crocodile Pond, the Wli Waterfalls, the Tafi Monkey Sanctuary and many others. In all cases the curious visitor had to beat a hasty return or find him/herself alone in the wilderness. Reaching those places can be nightmarish because of the poor nature of the roads. We need to give tourism development more serious attention than we are doing now.
Recently a tourism marketing strategy was launched aimed at, according to its initiators, launching Ghana as the prime tourism destination in the West African sub-region. It is a laudable idea but what is the guarantee that it will not end up becoming an Accra event, which will not change the tourism map of the country?
Investment in tourism is not about printing T-shirts, cloths and other paraphernalia and parading in them on the streets of media. Neither shall we achieve much if we get social commentators talking plenty on the radio and television extolling our tourism potentials.
We do not need anyone to tell us that we have beautiful places in the country that can attract the tourist. What we need is the development of these places and making sure that they are accessible to the visitor. That means building good roads to these places, providing decent accommodation for those who want to spend a night or two and making sure that recreational and leisure facilities are available to provide total satisfaction to tourists.
President Obama’s visit is an opportunity to make good money from those who may want to take advantage of the visit to explore the country. But with the rains rendering almost all our roads impassable, where can they go?
The World Tourism Day celebration in Ghana is an opportunity to sell our country. However, as things stand now, it is likely we may end up sending the delegates to the Elmina and Cape Coast castles; show them a few people dancing bare-chested and return home feeling satisfied that we have showcased Ghana to the world. We can do more than that, but we have to change our approach to tourism development, otherwise we should as well forget the windfall for now.