Participants from the Ghana Tourism Authority and The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture have participated in a 3-day UNWTO Communication Media and Tourism workshop in Africa was held at Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe. The workshop was organised to sharpen the knowledge and skills needed to effectively engage with local and international media, equip paricipants with techniques to develop effective messaging and storytelling strategies and explore how to use innovative technologies and platforms to reach wider audiences.
The training, which from 13th to 15th November, 2023 was attended by representatives from 20 Africa Countries with more than 50 participants comprising media practitioners, hoteliers, destination management organisations, public sector tourism practitioners, marketing and public relations officials. Some of the participating countries include Zimbabwe, Cote d’Ivoire, Seychelles, Gambia, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Benin, Congo Brazzaville, Tanzania, Ghana, Botswana, Malawi, Namibia, Djibouti, Spain, Austria, South Africa
The Workshop featured facilitators including experts from UNWTO, Media Professionals and Travel Media, and Photo Content Creators.
Discussions at the workshop centered on;
- Effective Story telling
- Tourism for nature, heritage, and community
- Mainstreaming the tourism conversation
- Tech and Communication – digital platform and delivery in times of limited budget
- Pitching tourism story to mainstream media
Participants were tasked with addressing the key challenges facing tourism communicators, pitching your tourism story to the mainstream media, Tourism for development, and Building and curating media relations and crisis communications.
The Session on Crises Communication saw participants participate in a hands-on team-buiding exercise to draw crises communication plans. The workshop ended with a all stakeholders agreeing on the need to organise such programs more frequently. Participants also requested the UNWTO officials to consider assisting stakeholders to come up with communication manuals for their organisations.
