Accra (Greater Accra), 16th June 99 ?

Mrs. Doreen Owusu-Fianko, Executive Director, Ghana Tourist Board (GTB), on Tuesday called on individual tourism operators to help maintain a clean environment, especially on the beaches, saying this is important to the growth of the industry.

"This can be done by adopting a street, lane, avenue, township, locality, district or even a region and contributing in diverse and ingenious ways to improving our environmental sanitation," she said.

Mrs. Owusu-Fianko was speaking at the launch of a tourism awareness and promotional book entitled "Ghana: Practical Travellers Guide to the Gold Coast of West Africa" written by Jojo Cobbinah.

The 380-page book which covers a wide variety of information on the lives and lifestyles of Ghanaians is to serve as a guide to tourists.

It also presents the discerning business or leisure traveller and curious adventure tourists with an insight into the country to avoid unpleasant experiences and enjoy the best of our environment, history, culture and receptive services.

Mrs. Owusu-Fianko said "such little drops of efforts" by tourism operators would create awareness among the people and other corporate bodies to emulate.

She explained that GTB lacks tourism brochures and promotional materials and said the book will fill the void in its promotional activities.

Mrs. Owusu-Fianko expressed the hope that the book would contribute to boosting tourism in the country.

The occasion was also used as a platform to give a brief on the forthcoming Second International Tourism Trade Fair dubbed "Inter-Tourism 99", which is on the theme "Vision 2020: Ghana Tourism Gateway to Africa."

Mr Frank Appiah, Managing Director, Talent Marketing, said the fair which will be held from September 24 to October three will feature 5,000 participants.

He explained that the fair aims at exposing the tourist product of Ghana in particular and Africa in general to both local and foreign travel trade operators, investors and tourism input suppliers.

It will also provide an ideal forum for interaction between the travel trade, corporate market and travel input suppliers and boost domestic and regional tourism by exposing some attraction areas to visitors.