Tourism is the practice of travelling to see marvellous sites in or outside one’s country. In Ghana, tourism has been a dependable source of revenue over the years. Year in year out, many foreign national troop into the country to see beautiful and wonderful sites. Ghana has many tourist attractions and these, coupled with hospitable nature of Ghanaians in general, keep drawing in lots and lots of these pleasure-seekers.
Like any other African country, Ghana continues to strive to promote tourism in a very dynamic way. To realize the full potential of the tourism industry, a complete ministry- Ministry of Tourism-has been assigned the responsibility of promoting tourism and tourism activities in the country. It is the duty of the ministry to make sure that the various tourist centers are developed.
The ministry also sets standards for and regulates the activities of hotel and restaurants operators all over the country. This is to ensure that those who enter the country as tourists do not go through any form of embarrassment. Nowadays, various districts have been given the mandate to create tourist centres and to maintain and supervise tourist activities so as to raise funds for development.
Unfortunately, however, the tourism industry continues to grow at a snail’s pace despite the seemingly serious attention given by various governments. There are a lot of tourist sites that have not been developed. Also, apart from lack of funds to hold the sector up, the various military regimes in the past also embarked on some stern policies like border closure and curfew that did not help the sector to achieve complete development.
Recently, international terrorism has also affected tourism all over the world. Terrorism is the act of using violence or threats of violence to force someone to do or give up something. Even countries that have not yet experienced any terrorists attacks still suffer considerably because of the large number of tourists that come from the affected countries.
In Ghana, as in many countries, the 11th September terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in America was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Before then, tourism was a major foreign exchange earner in this country. The years just after saw a considerable decline in the number of people who arrived in the country as tourists.