Skift Take
Ghana’s success in bring in members of the African diaspora to go to should drive its next-door neighbors to develop similar techniques. They can see there’s huge quantities of money to be made from a lucrative African American market re-energizing from the pandemic as travelers are eager for travel to the continent.
Rashaad Jorden
Origins tourism has experienced a substantial boom over the last few years. Locations, lots of in Europe, were attracting great deals of visitors eager to explore locations linked to their family history.
However one country outside of Europe, in particular, has actually particularly taken advantage of this growing popularity. Stimulated by the success of the Year of Return, tour operators in Ghana have seen business rise beyond the 2019 effort by progressively promoting, not just household ties, however the cultural bounds tourists in the African diaspora have with a whole area many people were cut off from by slavery. That interest is on the increase again after the depths of the pandemic.
Tourist companies in Ghana are greatly targeting members of the diaspora– specifically those who are a part of an African American travel market growing in financial clout and significantly eager to explore their ancestral homelands.
“We feel that given the wealth that African Americans and black Americans have, given that costs power, travel budget plans of blacks in America, we felt that it has to do with time that we start that conversation that, instead of moving to any other location, come back to where you came from,” said Akwasi Agyeman, CEO of Ghana’s Tourist Authority. “We likewise felt that the history was not being taught.”
Thus, Ghana’s federal government marketed 2019– the 400th anniversary of the first taped arrival of enslaved Africans arriving in the United States– as the Year of Return, and it invited members of the African diaspora to visit the country where numerous slave slips departed from. President Nana Akufo-Addo acknowledged his country felt an obligation to invite people who might trace their origins to Africa due to Ghana’s function in the servant trade.
“(The) Year of Return definitely played a significant function in driving interest to Ghana,” stated Rashida Mohammed Pangabu, the co-founder of Ghanaian-based trip operator ProTour Africa, about the project that contributed substantially to the country attracting more than a million visitors in 2019.
Pangabu credits the pent-up demand for travel to Ghana for leading her company to increase its offerings. ProTour Africa produced 12 brand-new travel plans in February 2020 and added 4 last month, which Pangabu said will make it possible for potential guests to participate in a larger variety of activities– consisting of going to various sites connected to Ghana’s culture and history.
Those tourists excited to explore their heritage will continue to be a crucial market for a country that intends to draw in one million visitors by 2024 and eight million by 2027. The Ghanaian federal government has even launched a project titled Beyond the Year of Return that seeks to profit from the momentum from its effective initiative.
Other tour operators running trips in the nation said they have actually benefited from the projects. “We saw an uptick (in interest),” said Marc Sison, the item director for Kensington Tours, which has eight trips to Ghana on the books for 2022– compared to 4 last year– that run from approximately $4,500 to $9,000. “You have church groups and neighborhood groups that have an interest in the West African culture and discovering the slave trade. We would get a lot more group requests specifically for Ghana.”
“Prior to the pandemic hit, it was starting to end up being an emerging destination for us and I believe it is already getting steam once again.”
Sison’s company has actually taped five times as numerous reservations for its Ghana offerings in 2022 than it did last year. He included more might be on the horizon as Kensington Tours typically gets a significant dive in inquiries throughout Black History Month in February.
Given that the Year of the Return, ProTour Africa has actually continued to bring in a significant variety of African American visitors in large part due to Ghana’s Afrochella Festival, which takes place annually in December. Although Pangabu wouldn’t offer a specific figure for the number of visitors it invited in December of 2019 and 2021– aside from stating it had 30 percent more guests in the previous year– she said that the business’s bookings for 2022 look appealing so far.
Pangabu said her company has actually experienced success by providing potential visitors, specifically members of the African diaspora, a chance to reconnect with their roots as well as pay tribute to their forefathers. Kensington Tours has actually taken a similar angle, partnering with Ancestry.com to release a series of journeys called Personal Heritage Journeys that enable tourists to visit the location where they can trace their ancestral roots to.
“Our angle in marketing Ghana in the coming years would be Pan-Africanism to explore your roots,” said Sison, who added his business is dealing with difficulties in Ghana due to the trouble of finding records but is presently working with Ancestry.com to figure out how it can enhance their offerings in the country.
“For those who are curious about the West African culture, there’s so much you can in fact do (there) apart from the slave history. There are so many things you can do in Ghana from a cultural point of view, so we are going to have that approach of Pan-Africanism.”
Pangabu pointed out Pan-Africanism, which she specified as a movement that looks for to unify all individuals of African descent both on the continent and in the diaspora, as a significant attraction for lots of visitors to Ghana recently, particularly African Americans. Travel to Ghana by U.S. residents jumped 26 percent from January 2019 to September 2019 compared to the previous year. So what are some methods trip operators are featuring the concept in their offerings?
“We have trips where you’re sitting down with a university professor or somebody who can explain the cultural makeup of Ghana,” Sison said, including that professors will typically do lecture-style rundowns of the area. “And you can do a calling event in Ghana. We can organize with a local chief to do (that). It’s something that’s rather popular on a few of our trips and extremely special for a great deal of our customers.”
“It is a location untapped by the North American tourist market,” Sison stated. “Ghana can best take advantage of the interest from the Year of Return by showing the year that it has far more to provide.”