The Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Hon. Catherine Abelma Afeku, Thursday, told a forum of global tourism investors to turn their attention to Ghana and invest in the West African nation.

Ghana as the center of the world, according to the Tourism Minister, has a lot of untapped business opportunities, especially, in the tourism industry, which if well exploited, could yield high returns.

For instance, she said there is a huge market for accommodation in the tourism hospitality industry in Ghana where quite a number of first class hotels are in high demand as a result of the (MICE) market, meetings, incentives, conferences and events and or exhibitions.

The West African nation presently has only 2,700 hotel rooms. With a vision to establishing 11,000 hotel accommodations, the Tourism, Arts and Culture Minister noted that the situation begs for more investment in order to realize that dream, stressing that is the vision of the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

Another area worth exploiting, Hon. Catherine Afeku highlighted, is the aviation industry where there abound plenty opportunities for investment. “Ghana is yearning for aviation hub where we can have direct flights from Malta to Accra and other countries.

This will improve on tourism and opens up business opportunities for the Mediterranean market”, she noted.

In addition to that, she said the Creative Arts and Culture sub-sectors are high potential areas that need to be harnessed, urging the global tourism players to look nowhere further than the former Gold Coast, to do business with.

Hon. Catherin Afeku made this observation when addressing the 5th Mediterranean Tourism Forum which was held at the Hilton Hotel in St. Julian’s, Malta.

The event which was organized by the Mediterranean Tourism Foundation (MTF) was under the theme ‘Mediterranean Blue; Beautiful Life unites everyone’.

The MFT was established by the Malta Hotels and Restaurants Association (MHRA) with the aim of increasing the potential for sustainable tourism growth across the Mediterranean region.