Ghana's exhibition booth was well-branded at New York Times Travel Show

The Ghana Tourism Authority in fact, had one of its successful exhibitions at the 2020 edition of the New York Times Travel Show.

A review carried out by The AfroDrifter, an African Travel agency, which was present to monitor the new trends, described the country’s booth among one of the worst compared to that of countries including Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Morocco.

Per the review, Ghana’s booth was;

“The worst booth at the whole show. Not too sure if the people who manned that booth were on strike or not but they spent Saturday and Sunday nonchalantly on their phones. There was nothing to show except a yellow tag on the wall written Ghana Tourism Authority. The booths were not decorated and there seemed to be virtually nothing going on.

There were about four people who sat the whole day with no effort at all to even interact with potential customers. This was by far the worst booth,” the report said.

The agency has, however, emerged with a retraction of their claims, noting it was a blunder on their part.

Their response follows a release from the authority, debunking the claims.

The Authority noted that the booths being referred to were annexed stands which were created alongside the main decorated one, “to be able to serve the numerous visitors”.

“The GTA booth was dually branded as ‘Visit Ghana’ and ‘Beyond The Return.’ The setup was engaging with several trade and consumer visitors….The tables were nicely covered with the white “Year of Return” cloth, the backdrop was boldly branded as ‘Beyond The Return,” and the entryway branded as ‘Visit Ghana.” There were thousands of marketing materials and giveaways to visitors which included Ghana chocolate, notebooks, pen drives, informational materials and much more.” A response from the authority noted.

Having noted the video attached to the Ghana Tourism Authority’s response, they confirmed to www.ghanaweb.com that it was an oversight.

According to them, they based their story on the separate stands (annex) that had been created by the Authority to serve the teeming number of customers.

“On 29th January we published an article where we noted Ghana Tourism Authority as having the worst booth of the African Exhibitors. This was based on my interaction with officials from GTA who were seated at 2 undecorated booths and had a Ghana Tourism sticker behind. It turns out, they had a booth that was decorated which we did not notice.

Our intention was not driven by malice and would like to retract that part! Please see the video below which shows that indeed Ghana Tourism Authority had a functional booth”, the new article read.