The Deputy Tourism Minister, Dr. Ziblim Iddi has indicated that, the ministry has recorded a quantum increase in the level of tourism receipts recorded in just few weeks after installing digital devices at entry points.
In an interview with Goldstreet Business at the Vodafone Customer ‘Xperience’ Summit 2018 in Accra on Friday, the Minister said “in the last few weeks, we have had reports from Cape coast, Elmina and the Wli Water Falls that the machines that we installed at this entry points have led to a very quantum increase in our receipts.”
Cape Coast Castle
“Without those instruments and machines, there would have been so many leakages and we wouldn’t have gotten so much from the site,” He added.
Dr. Iddi claimed that for Cape Coast castle, the ministry had never recorded GHS20,000 a month, but for the first time after the devices were installed the receipts recorded was more than GHS 80,000, representing more than 100 percent increase.
Wli waterfall
He also revealed that the receipts recorded for Wli Water Falls was even more amazing, stating that, “when we installed the POS devices, we realized that the sale actually increased over 100 percent in terms of the revenue that we were feting from there.”
He noted that the Wli Water Falls had always been regarded as most remote tourist attraction, for that reason it had been recording less receipts inflow.
Previous revenue
In 2016, tourism receipts for Ghana was US$952 million. Tourism receipts of Ghana increased from 35 million US dollars in 1997 to 952 million US dollars in 2016 growing at an average annual rate of 48.29 %.
Dr. Iddi said the ministry is adopting technology to monitor and enhance its receipts at the various tourist attraction that are under its control.
“We want to replicate this in all our tourist attraction, and make sure that we close all the leakages. What we realized was that because we had human beings manning the entry points, at the end of the day there were so many opportunities for leakages”, he recounted.
He further noted that, “it is difficult to say that we are recording more tourist coming in now, or whether people were actually stealing our monies. But what it tells us is that, with monitoring equipment and modern tools, we improve on what we can do with the sector,” he stated.
Customer ‘Xperience’ Summit
The Vodafone Customer ‘Xperience’ Summit 2018 brought together experts from different industries to share transformational insight on the solutions to excellent service delivery through technology. These experts were from educational think- tanks and analyst in the health, tourism and hospitality sector.
They shared industry-based experiences about the importance of making customers a priority which is crucial to business growth.
By Joshua W. Amlanu
