Emeka Anokwuru
Africa Travel Quarterly (ATQ) Group has opened nominations for the 2019 Balafon West African travel and tourism awards as part of the annual travel event at Accra Weizo. Atqnews will host the awards of the 2019 edition. In 2017, it hosted the awards for Top 100 Tourism Personalities in West Africa and at the 2018 edition it hosted the Top 100 Hotels in West Africa. Besides its annual Balafon Award in 2019, atqnews seeks to positively position the leading conference centres in West Africa. The winners of the categories will be selected via nominations to [email protected] before June 7 and it will be ratified by a board made of specialists and the media. The award categories are: Travel Personality of the Year in West Africa, Tourism Man of the Year in West Africa, Aviation Man of the Year in West Africa, Hotel Personality of the Year in West Africa, Aviation Minister of the Year West Africa, and Tourism minister of the year in West Africa. Others are Best Airline in West Africa, Best Hotel in West Africa, Best Airport in West Africa (for government agencies), Best Ground Handling Company in West Africa, Best Tourism Marketing Award West Africa, Top Three Tourism Events of the Year West Africa, and Top Ten Conference Centres in West Africa.
Last year, at the World Travel Market in London, Ghana Tourism Authority signed a five-year memorandum of understanding with the organisers of Accra Weizo. The MOU is to jointly organise the successful expo with the owners Akwaaba Travel Market. Accra Weizo has been organised in Ghana for four years now and the 2019 edition has been fixed for June 28 and 29.
Ghana is the leading meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibitions (MICE) destination in West Africa and ranks number one on ICCA ratings. Hosting Accra Weizo reinforces the positioning of Accra for MICE and Ghana for tourism.
Weizo has successfully brought travel professionals from different countries to Ghana for tourism business. It is themed Seamless travel in West Africa.
The acting CEO of Ghana Tourism Authority, Mr. Akwasi Agyeman, signed on behalf of Ghana and Mr. Ikechi Uko signed on behalf of Akwaaba Travel Market.
“This Agreement offers Ghana an opportunity to help build up an already thriving platform into a bigger event. We recognise the efforts and contributions of the organisers but we want the event bigger than it is and we believe it will bring more travel professionals to Ghana,” Agyeman said.
On his part Uko thanked GTA for the partnership, adding, “It takes a man with a vision to see the power behind such platforms and move to take ownership of the project for the growth of tourism in Ghana. I applaud the CEO and his team for this collaboration. We expect that with the goodwill of the government of Ghana, Weizo will grow bigger”. The agreement spells out roles