The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture Barbara Oteng-Gyasi has appealed to managers of hotels, guest houses and lodges across the country to reduce their rates to help boost domestic tourism and also help them stay in business in the wake of COVID-19 which has led to a ban in international travels.

According to Ms Oteng-Gyasi, the Ministry does not expect any significant improvement in international travels due to the coronavirus and so the goal is to boost domestic tourism.

To achieve this, the Minister said the Ministry is working on a programme but stakeholders such as hotels and guest houses must also think of reducing their rates to attract Ghanaians to patronise their facilities when they travel.

“We are working on a programme to improve domestic tourism. Because our borders are closed, there isn’t going to much incoming international travel during this period. We don’t anticipate any significant improvement in international travel until the end of this year. So for this year our target is to improve domestic tourism so we are going to work hard to push our ‘See Ghana, Wear Ghana, Feel Ghana agenda’ and we believe that Ghanaians will buy into it and let us travel and fall in love with our country because it is when we build our domestic tourism that we can also have something to say to the international tourists to also come and visit our country to see all that is good about our country,” Ms Oteng-Gyasi said at a press conference in Accra on Thursday, 4 May 2020.

She continued: In this regard, we are appealing to our Hotels, Guest Houses and Lodges that during this period that the patronage is low and they are not getting any international travellers coming in, they should look at adjusting their rates such that it will appeal to the Ghanaian populace to travel and stay in their facilities to help them to also generate some income during this difficult period.”