Welcome African-Americans as 'beentos' - Jake tells tour guides

Accra, Dec. 11, GNA - Mr Jake Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations, on Monday urged tour guides to welcome African-Americans who come to this country as 'beentos'.

"Make African-Americans feel that they have truly returned home and regard them as original 91beentos'," he said at the opening of a two-week training programme for tour guides in the country. The tour guides drawn from all the 10 regions would study about the Accra city tour and the pilgrimage route related to the slave trade. The Minister revealed that African-Americans spent about 40 billion dollars a year on holidays and it was important that Ghana attracted such visitors to earn some foreign exchange.

"If we can have them coming for holidays regularly we are sure of having bigger investments in the country and a boost to the economy; we can expect that Africans in the Diaspora will bring money, and skills," he said.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey explained that the Joseph Project, which aims at attracting over a million African-Americans to the country next year, was part of a bigger programme dubbed "Akwaaba Anyemi". The Akwaaba Anyemi programme, among other things, hopes to educate Ghanaians to recognize African-Americans as relatives and to treat them as such.

Mr Obetsebi-Lamptey noted that tour guiding was an important pillar in the tourism industry hence the need to train them to be able to handle tourists well.

"Tourists who come to Ghana do not come here just to sleep in big hotels or eat in restaurants but they come here for the tourism experience and that lies on the shoulders of the tour guide," he said He said tour guides could make a lot of money from their job if they did it well and urged participants to take tour guiding seriously.