With over 400 million population, 15 countries, enthralling tourism potential, especially an approximately 6000 kilometers coastline, breathtaking landscape, and many cultures, West African has all it takes to lead the continent in tourism arrivals and earnings.
The above was the observation of tour operators in one of the panel discussions at this year’s edition of Accra Weizo, an annual travel expo targeted at the travel trade across the West African region.
The panelists, who spoke at the event, which held at Accra City Hotel, Accra, Ghana, on June 28, 2024, including: Nana Basoah Boakye, CEO, BT Travel and Tours Ghana; Olanma Ojukwu, CEO, GOTA Voyages, Benin Republic, Shalom Asuquo, CEO, Travelab Nigeria and Alisa Asamoah, president, Ghana Tour Operators Association, all decried the inability of the region to become Africa’s tourism powerhouse, citing reasons as well.
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Speaking at the panel discussion on the theme: ‘Growing Partnership Among Travel and Tour Professionals in West Africa’, the BT Travel CEO noted that the region needs more mutual collaborations to be able to harness its tourism potential for the benefit of the people and for further development of the region.
According to Boakye, ECOWAS countries do less travel and even trade exchanges due to lack of partnerships that have also prevented them from scaling up their capacities in growing tourism.
“Our region receives the least tourism arrivals in Africa and we cannot improve on that without first encouraging our people to travel within the region and also collaboration,” Boakye said.
In her views, Shalom Asuquo noted that in addition to collaboration, healthy competition is necessary to drive tourism in West Africa.
“We need to make West Africa a competitive destination for footfalls and to grow our tourism beyond each country’s border,” Asuquo said.
She noted further that competitiveness will improve service culture, product offering, packaging and easy access to a destination by visitors.
“We need to be competitive, in a healthy way because when a destination does not meet international expectations, the footfall end there,” she decried
Toeing same line, Gifty Barawusu, CEO, Barjul Travels and Tours, and representative of Alisa Asomoah, president of Ghana Tour Operators Association, supported collaboration among tour operators across the region, but also hinted that there is need for healthy competition among the operators to ensure quality offerings and standards.
“Competition breeds professionalism and enables tour businesses to be innovative in their offerings and services as well as imbibe world best practice in their operations.
So, I see nothing wrong with it as long as it is yielding results,” Barawusu said.
But Olanma Ojukwu, CEO, GOTA Voyages, Benin Republic, called on tour operators within the region to pull their strength together in order to close the gaps in poor service and quality delivering.
Also, considering the population of the region, Boakye noted that if 30 percent of the population travel within the region for tourism exchanges, the region would swim in wealth, amid availability of resources for more investments in the tourism industry.
“Let us reduce it to 10 percent, if that number travel within the region, if you do the calculation, we will have sustained earnings that will boost our GDP and no need for IMF loans,” he said.
Also on the impressive data and potential of the region, Asuquo noted that West Africa is big enough to sustain its tourism if the numbers start moving across the region whether for tourism or trade.
“The ECOWAS should give tourism priority and help in removing all the bottlenecks that have hinderd the regions from optimally harnessing its tourism potential. It is a practical thing, you cannot grow tourism when these barriers are there, especially challenges at the borders,” she highlighted.
She also suggested that the Nigeria-Benin Republic-Togo-Ghana tourism corridor, with millions of dollars potential, can be used as a model, though it would require huge support and improvements to attain that height.
Olanma Ojukwu also think that the figures cannot lie and should be taken advantage of to improve and grow the sector.
“Benin Republic is about 12 million people. But we have so much import coming into our country that end up in Nigeria. So, we need each other, we need to discover our individual strength as countries and use them to support the weakness of others in order to grow.
“This is what Europeans do that make their region the most-visited in the world today.
So, let us start exchanging visits more to encourage foreigners to visit also,” Ojukwu said.
To ensure seamless travels, Barawusu called on respective countries to open their borders more to their neighbours and also firm border control agreements on mutual grounds bearing the interest of ECOWAS in mind.
But before seamless travel can take root, Boakye suggested that challenges must be dealt with.
The challenges, according to him, include lack of trust, double-crossing, language barrier, currency issues, insecurity, high airfares and accommodation, poor packaging, lack of maintenance culture, among others.
Boakye suggested the creation of a common platform for tour business in West Africa, where everything can be easily accessed like travel voucher.
Barawusu called on facility owners to imbibe maintenance culture in order to keep the property fresh as visitors want value for money offerings.
Asuquo and Ojukwu insisted that there should a form of certification in the industry across the region to ensure standards.
According to them, constant training and retraining of practitioners across the tour operating and tourism value chain will boost capacity to deliver quality offerings and world class services in the sector.
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On security, Ikechi Uko, CEO, Akwaaba Africa Travel Market and the organiser of Accra Weizo, noted that tour operators need collaborations with local people in order to succeed and also keep their clients safe during their visit.
“For safety, work with people who have local knowledge,” Uko changed the tour operators.
He also noted that Acrra Weizo was initiated to address the lack of platforms for tourism exchanges in West Africa.
For him, the fact that tour operators and other travel and tourism industry stakeholders gather at a place yearly to discuss their challenges, solutions and to also highlight success made in the efforts at boosting seamless travel in the region, means that solutions are at hand.
Meanwhile, the panelists concluded by agreeing to collaborate more for travel exchanges across the region, starting with the Nigeria-Benin Republic-Togo-Ghana corridor, with more countries joining on the back of the succes of the initiatives.
They also called on governments across the ECOWAS region to see the potential of tourism and support with policies that will boost the industry to create jobs and impact the economies of the countries.
“We need taxes on airfares to reduce for fares to come down, incentives to hotels to reduce rates, and compliance with ECOWAS free movement protocol to ensure seamless tourism exchanges in the region,” they requested.
However, aside from the panel discussions, the travel expo had other events, including a pre-event four-country road trip, keynote paper delivery and award given to Asky Airlines as the Best Airline in West Africa.
