USAID director calls on Gizo

Accra (Greater Accra), 28 Jan.'99 -

Accra (Greater Accra), 28 Jan.'99 - Mr Mike Gizo, Minister of Tourism, yesterday stressed the need to create a new tourism awareness to achieve the goals set in the 15-year national tourism development plan. These can be achieved with the creation of a new marketing strategy which will sell Ghana to the outside world as a great potential in the tourism industry. He said this when Dr Frank J. Young, Mission Director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), called on him to assess areas where the agency can be of assistance to the tourism sector. The Ministry has come out with a blueprint, which deals with environmental setting, historical influences, cultural patterns, socio- economic patterns and national development objectives and policies. Mr Gizo said the Ministry is now ready to take off, but needs support from other collaborators in the field of training and infrastructure. He said in May this year there will be a lot of conferences on tourism in the country and expressed the hope that some of the facilities being expanded can cater for the people. The Ministry of Tourism is very keen on expanding facilitites and assisting those who operate in the tourism industry to improve on their services. Dr Young, who has toured most of the tourist attractions in the country, observed that Ghana can package her tourist attractions to the standards of other countries. He said there is the need to improve on roads and other facilities that makes tourism more attractive, adding that staff working in hotels need to up-grade their knowledge, especially in the use of computers and fax machines, "because having the facilities without knowing how to operate them does not serve any good purpose".