I came across a story in the paper last week about the major transformations that the National theatre will be undergoing due to bilateral meetings between the Minister of commerce of the People’s Republic of China and stakeholders of the theatre. The National Theatre is among one of our country’s major cultural and creative art sites. Seeing the story had me thinking about the Centre for National Culture in Cape Coast. This just like the National Theatre in Accra is an event centre that holds many theatrical productions and regional programs and yet time and time again the community stakeholders of the centre have come together to highlight the facility’s need for infrastructural upgrades.
In fact, not only is it the Centre for National Culture that faces this issue but several other second-tier tourism gems also face the issue of poor infrastructural development and inadequate budgets to solve them. Going through the Tourism report released in 2025 of the top visited tourist sites in the country most of them where in Accra, Kumasi and Cape Coast. This makes you wonder about the other regions and all the excellence and rich beauty hiding there. Everybody has heard of the Aburi Gardens but what about the Oboadaka Waterfalls which is also near Aburi?
It’s not unusual that certain sites remain rather low on tourist checklist but I believe that one way that these gems can be brought into the light is through travel influencers. On average, people around the world spend four hours and thirty-seven minutes on their phones, two hours and twenty-three of that time is spent scrolling through social media pages. Roughly seventy-one to eighty one percent of people who use social media are influenced by what they see on their feeds. Knowing this the tourism sector should follow the lead of modern businesses especially hospitality focused ones by using digital creators as ambassadors to have greater reach to more individuals and create a buzz for the industry. The Ghana Tourism Authority can collaborate with a number of influencers to promote not only the few already well visited tourist sites but the under travelled ones too. Influencers could be picked from each region and under the chaperoning from each of the regional offices of the Ghana Tourism Authority they could travel to all tourist sites within the region and then also incorporate the Experience Ghana, Share Ghana hashtag on all posts. There are endless possibilities of what we could achieve on our tourism front if we effectively use digital creators. We must remember that as beautiful as these places look through the screen no pixel can capture the true effervescence these sites have to offer in person.
Maame Ama Boa Effah Intern, Corporate Affairs Ghana Tourism Authority
