Elmina, April 25, GNA-Mr. Ben Anane-Nsiah, the Ashanti Regional Manager of the Ghana Tourists Board

on Wednesday urged tourism experts in the Central Region to explore other interesting tourism potentials to help boost the socio-economic development of the area.

He stressed that it was time for them to look beyond the traditional tourism attractions, including the two castles at Elmina and Cape Coast and the Kakum National Park because tourism is dynamic and must be diversified to sustain the interest of tourists.

Mr Anane-Nsiah made the call at a day's stakeholder's conference on "tourism development in the Central Region" at Elmina on Wednesday. It was organized by the Central Region Development Commission (CEDECOM) for key stakeholders, including hoteliers, tourism experts, and academia, among others to evolve strategies that would promote sustainable tourism in the region.

"There is the need to explore other areas and repackage existing attractions to make them more exciting to attract and retain tourists in the region since the industry must help boost the economy of the region and nation at large", he stressed.

Mr Anane-Nsiah expressed concern that after more than 15 years of establishing the Kakum National Park, nothing more has been added to it to sustain the interest of regular tourists.

He also stressed the need for the experts to create events like inter-coastal regatta where fishermen from the coastline of the sub-region would participate, sports fishing where tourists would hire boats for fishing and the organisation of cruising from Cape Coast to the Elmina castle for tourists in addition to the castle tours. He said it was important that the

Pan-African-Historical-Theatre-Festival (PANAFEST), be used to market the country's tourism destination through coordinated, consistent and sustainable programmes as well as a good designed marketing strategies to help achieve the millennium mark.

A deputy director at the Ministry of Tourism and Diasporan Relations, Mr Humphrey Koma said government has developed a tourism policy to diversify tourism products for it to become the major foreign exchange earner and also to place the country's industry in the lead in the African sub-region by 2015.

He said the country is close to achieving its tourism projections of attracting one million tourists to generate about 1.5 billion US dollars this year and also called for diversification of tourism products to meet both local and international expectations. Mr Spencer Taylor, head of the investment promotion unit of CEDECOM who opened the conference said the aim was to enable key stakeholders to make critical analysis of tourism development in the region.