President of the Women in Business and Tourism (WIBAT), Eunice Ogbugo has stated that more women need to be empowered in the tourism industry to stay competitive. She believes if attention is paid to women in the industry it will encourage them to do more to rake in more income for the industry.
Speaking at the launch of WIBAT by the Ghana Tourism Authority, she explained that the association is focused on getting more women engaged in businesses in the tourism space to empower more women in that sector.
“We realized that we meet mostly at events. So we decided to form a group that can help us network with each other, get to know each other better, interact and do partnerships in our various businesses and then take it to the next level,” the group’s president Eunice Ogbugo said.
Data available from the Ministry of Tourism shows that there are more women employed in Ghana’s tourism industry as compared to men.
The sector in 2017 also contributed 6.2 % to the country’s GDP.
Currently, the Tourism sector is creating various initiatives to empower women. Some of which includes collaboration with EXIM Bank to support SMEs owned by women in the tourism sector.
In an interview with Citi Business News at the launch of WIBAT and Dinner last Friday, Madam Ogbugo said more needs to be done to be able to achieve their ultimate aim of staying competitive.
“So we are basically there to promote the spirit of entrepreneurship in our women, to encourage women to go into business and not just small scale business but big ones. So we want to have women owning tourism companies or others in the bigger value chains. We are basically trying to promote African women entrepreneurs because we want to see ourselves on that list of fortune 500 companies,” she added.