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At the prodding of the IMF/World Bank, several developing countries un-dertook socio-economic reforms in the 1980s aimed at restructuring and stabilizing their economies. Dubbed structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), the specific reforms included trade liberalisation, privatization, de-valuation and export promotion. In Ghana tourism, which had hitherto been an insignificant industry in the national economy, was in 1985 declared along with three other sectors as a ‘priority sector’ and promoted as a tool for diversification and for earning foreign exchange in the context of SAP. Between 1985 and 2005, tourism flourished in Ghana in the wake of SAP, even though the sector’s key components i.e. accommodation, intermediar-ies and car rentals enjoyed dissimilar fortunes. More importantly, business travel emerged as the catalyst in the transformation of the sector, a process which underlines the link between the tourism sector and the socio-economic and political environments in which the former operates. Deci-sion-makers and tourism planners ought, therefore, to appreciate this link in order not to conceive tourism development as the mere construction and marketing of attractions and accommodation facilities as if leisure travel held sway in the country. |
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