Use digital platforms to promote businesses – GTA advises industry operators
Director of the Ghana Tourism Authority [GTA] for Bono, Bono East and the Ahafo Region, Joseph Appiagyei, is advising industry operators to use digital marketing platforms to grow and promote their businesses.
He noted that digital marketing is one of the most important tools to improve business and create opportunities.
He gave the advice during a training programme for players in the hospitality industry in Sunyani.
The 170 participants who took part in the training were taken through the basics of marketing on social media platforms.
The training programme was organised by the GTA and aimed at enhancing and equipping operators with the requisite skills and knowledge to be able to properly manage their facilities.
The event formed part of the GHC100 billion Ghana Cares “Obaatanpa programme” which is a three and half-year comprehensive programme to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and return the country to a sustained path of robust growth in the tourism sector and the economy in general.
The GTA boss advised operators to be abreast with current trends in international marketing through the digital platforms.
“We know that the tourism industry is dynamic, it keeps changing, especially with the advent of the COVID-19 problem, so operators have to abreast themselves with what is going on in the international market. Because if you don’t acquire knowledge to adjust yourself, then you phase out from the market, you can’t compete with the rest of the world.
“So, to be able to compete favourably in the world, we need to go internet that’s why we have introduced what we call digital marketing so that operators would brainstorm, be educated to have ample knowledge so that they can divert their operations into digitalisation,” he said.
An IT consultant and co-founder of Mega Eye Group, Dread Kingsley Azalete, said Ghana can do a lot to market itself with the various digital platforms.
“According to statistics, the tourism industry has lost about $1.2 billion globally, which is a huge figure for any economy. Also, what statistics are telling us is that we have about 4.66 billion active internet users as we are talking right now, and then we are just about seven billion. So, that makes it about 60% of the world’s population active internet users. Then we need to do internet business because there are more people online, so we can push businesses to people and then we can increase our sales of revenue.
“These days, the most important thing people look out for is content, if your content is good, if you have rich content, you would be able to sell. We have rich culture as a country, we have rich products that we think the world should be able to know,” he added.
