The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), through the Ghana CARES Obaatan pa programme, has launched a two-day capacity building training on product development for high-end hospitality establishments in Accra.
The training is a continuation of a series of training programs targeting the tourism and hospitality industry to build their resilience to withstand the impact of COVID-19 on the industry.
Mr. Ben Anane Nsiah, Deputy Director General, General Services, GTA, said the tourism component of the Ghana CARES program included a series of trainings and capacity building initiatives to gradually build the muscle of the industry by introducing new global trends to enable it to bounce back.
He said today’s training was deliberately to help businesses become more flexible and agile in rolling out more products to target more domestics to reduce their vulnerability to external shocks.
“We’re still gradually building muscle in the industry, we’re still introducing them to global trends, we’re trying to get them to see a little bit beyond the boundaries and beyond what’s established, and we’re trying to navigate through all the many shocks that are possible.”
Mr. Anane said this is also to familiarize industry players with new trends that would enable them to increase revenue trends to explore and embark on more events and ventures to maximize revenue from all corners.
He said the target is mainly for those in the hospitality market, from three to five star hotels in the southern part of the country, because they have more space and resources to innovate and the capacity to conceptualize different ways of doing things for profit. in their organization.
He noted that the training will be replicated for other players across the country to enable them fully bounce back from the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and boost domestic tourism to insulate it from global dominance.
Dr Kobby Mensah of the University of Ghana Business School and facilitator of the training said that following the impact of COVID-19, the sector had seen some growth but not as expected, so there was a need to start building capacity as part of resilience building for the sector to recover properly.
“If we provide them with training in new areas and trends such as technology, it means that we are preparing them to take advantage not only of the recovery, but also in preparing for other unforeseen crises.”
Some participants expressed their appreciation to the GTA for this initiative, as more knowledge, experience and collaboration was needed from the experience of COVID-19 to move the industry forward.
“We’re coming back to our facilities with lots of ideas to add to what we already offer in terms of product development and service delivery to meet different customer expectations, make them happy and keep them.”

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