Ghana launches 2013 Tourism Awards
This year’s National Tourism Awards has been launched in Koforidua, in the Eastern Region (E/R), on the theme: “Gaining a Competitive Edge Through Innovation and Service Excellence.”
It is aimed at rewarding excellence and professionalism exhibited by industries in the tourism sector, and to publicly encourage stakeholders, who had worked to promote tourism in the country.
Launching the programme, Ms Helen Adjoa Ntoso, Regional Minister, lauded the initiative by the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), saying, “it will go a long way to showcase the rich and potential tourist areas in the Region and the nation as a whole’’.
She expressed optimism that such a measure would improve services, and help to boost national income earnings, and to elevate Ghana’s image internationally.
Ms Ntoso appealed to hotel operators to strive for world class standards, to enable them to host international conferences and to be part of the contemporary competitive tourism industry.
She called on the Municipal and District Assemblies to (MDAs) identify potential tourist areas and existing sites and promote them to attract investors into the Region.
“Tourist attractions are dotted all over the Region with rich natural beauty, dramatic landscape, historic relics and traditional cultures, but it a worry to me that the MDAs are unable to promote them because they are cash-trapped due to their huge responsibilities,” she said.
Ms Vicky Awuah, Regional Manager of the GTA, asked stakeholders in the tourism sector to work hard to promote it in the Region.
She said this would enable the Region to win more prestigious awards and to endear stakeholders to the global spectacle.
“It is time we prove to Ghanaians and the world that the Eastern Region is a tourism destination in Ghana,” she said.
Mr Anane Nsiah, Special Event Manager at GTA, urged operators in the tourism industry to pay their taxes and Social Security contributions of their employers regularly and promptly, saying “these form part of the criteria for award”.
Source: GNA