By Hafsa Obeng
Accra, Sept. 26, GNA – Prof. Kobby Mensah, the Executive Director of the Ghana Tourism Development Company Limited (GTDC), has called for the strategic use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), to enhance human capability and create more personalised and distinctly Ghanaian tourism experiences.
He said although AI was rapidly transforming the tourism industry, technology should not be viewed simply as a tool to replace people, stressing that tourism remained fundamentally a people-centred industry.
Prof. Mensah made the call at the World Tourism Day Summit organised by the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), Greater Accra Region, on the theme: “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism.”
He said the tourism experience began long before a visitor arrived at a destination and continued even after departure, with digital technology increasingly shaping the entire visitor journey.
“The question before us, therefore, is not whether artificial intelligence will enter tourism. It already has. The more important question is: how do we use it deliberately to redesign the tourism experience in Ghana?” he said.
Prof. Mensah said AI could provide 24-hour responses to enquiries, recommend accommodation and experiences based on individual preferences, facilitate voice searches, provide virtual tours and create personalised itineraries.
He said during the booking and pre-arrival stages, AI could support dynamic pricing, personalised communication and faster check-in processes, while at destinations, smart rooms could learn guests’ preferences and AI concierge systems could provide information and facilitate services.
He added that predictive maintenance could identify equipment problems before they disrupted visitor experiences, while translation technologies could help overcome language barriers between international visitors and tourism employees.
He noted that the benefits of AI extended beyond the visitor experience to tourism business operations, including guest profiling, customer relationship management, inventory and housekeeping management, revenue forecasting and demand planning.
“Tourism is fundamentally a people-centred industry. Our objective should be to use technology to augment human capability. Allowing our people to spend less time on repetitive processes and more time creating meaningful experiences, demonstrating Ghanaian hospitality and telling the stories of our destination,” he said.
Prof. Mensah said Ghana could use digital technologies to move beyond simply digitising existing tourism processes and instead create new tourism possibilities.
He said data could help the country better understand travellers, their interests, destinations they visited and experiences they valued, while AI could be used to personalise the destination and connect tourism products with visitors more efficiently.
He, however, cautioned that digital transformation must be accompanied by responsible practices, particularly regarding privacy, data protection, cybersecurity, digital inclusion, human skills and the ethical use of AI.
Prof. Mensah said Ghana’s heritage, festivals, cuisine, music, landscapes, people and history provided unique assets that technology should help to preserve, promote and commercialise globally.
“Artificial intelligence should not make these experiences less Ghanaian. It should help us discover better ways of presenting, connecting, preserving and commercialising them for the world,” he said.
Mrs Roberta Baaba Mprah Arhinful, the Regional Director of the GTA, Greater Accra Region, said digital technology and AI were at the heart of the rapid transformation taking place in tourism.
She said technology was redefining how visitors discovered destinations, planned journeys, marketed tourism services and engaged with tourism businesses.
She said Ghana must embrace digital innovation to make the tourism sector more competitive, sustainable and inclusive, while creating opportunities for young people to participate in the digital tourism economy.
Mrs Arhinful said the summit provided a platform for stakeholders to exchange ideas, explore emerging technologies and build partnerships capable of translating innovation into practical solutions for Ghana’s tourism industry.
She reaffirmed the GTA’s commitment to working with industry stakeholders, technology innovators, academia and development partners to ensure that Ghana did not merely respond to the digital transformation of tourism but actively shaped it.
GNA
Edited by Christabel Addo
Reporter: Hafsa Obeng
Email: [email protected]