GOGE Africa, a Pan African tourism brand in collaboration with Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has appointed the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dodi Travel and Tours, Mr Ahmed Naamann, as the Ambassador for Destination West Africa Project (DWAP) in Ghana.
DWAP is a three-year project launched by Goge Africa and it aims to improve intra-African Travel and Tour through promotion of tourism and lowering of barriers that impede inter-connectivity, especially in West Africa.
The Ambassador, Mr Naamann would lead the campaign of the DWAP to promote intra-African Tourism travel and trade to break barriers that impede investments, travel and tourism boost.
At a short ceremony held in Accra yesterday, the CEO of Goge Africa, Mr Isaac Moses, said the goal of the DWAP was to project West Africa as a choice destination for travel and investment in order to reduce the interest of West Africans in exploring the tourism potentials of the sub-region.
He said the barriers to intra-West Africa travels, trade and investments were enormous and needed to be lowered to encourage intra-regional, travels, tourism, trade and investment activities in the ECOWAS communities.
“It is observed that, West Africans do not travel within the ECOWAS communities due to poor inter- connectivity, not many airlines available to different regions in West Africa and people find it expensive travelling within West Africa.
And so they will rather go to Dubai because Dubai is quite cheap and there are a lot of airlines and on top of that, Dubai tourism makes consented efforts to promote their tourism here particularly to Nigerians,” he added.
Mr Moses indicated that, the ambassador would collaborate with some stakeholders in the tourism industry and other policy makers to drive traffic and expand the West African tourism market to boost the country’s tourism receipts.
Mr Naamann who was presented a certificate of honour to signify his confirmation expressed gratitude to Goge Africa and its partners for the honour bestowed on him and confidence reposed in him to champion the course.
He pledged to work with his team to ensure Ghana’s tourism potentials were promoted to create economic value and jobs.
BY VIVIAN ARTHUR
