I still believe in funeral tourism – Okraku-Mantey

Although the manifesto of the New Patriotic Party does not capture funeral tourism, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku-Mantey, one of the proponents of the idea, has reiterated his belief in it.

He told Kwame Dadzie during the Joy FM Manifesto Debate on Creative Economy that his reason for proposing that idea in the past, still holds.

“I still believe in funeral tourism. The month that we discussed funeral tourism as a topic when it went viral, I remember telling the whole Ghana that one of the one of the popular tourist sites in Japan was their cemetery because it is the biggest. And so when it comes to tourism, it is the prerogative of you the one who wants to sell a product that you have a story to tell, that could attract somebody to have to travel to, to have a purchase or watch, spend time and have experience with the product. So we are saying that, Ghanaians already travel. We travel for funerals anyway. So why don’t we add tourism to it? It still believe in it any day any time. It is not in the manifesto because it is not everything that hs to be in the manifesto.

The Chief Executive of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyeman, who was Mark’s co-speaker for the debate also added because funerals have tourism potentials, the thought about leveraging on them for better gains.

“If you look at the UN’s definition of tourism, anybody to travels outside his or her normal place for a period not more than a year. So when you travel to a funeral to say the Volta Region or Tamale, you don’t consider yourself as a tourist but really, you are touring because you might stay in a hotel which is part of the tourism industry, you will buy food in a restaurant or chop bar which is licensed by the GTA.

So the whole idea is that if you take a place like Ashanti Region, the value of funerals is tourism: music, cultural troupes performing, spinners, sound engineers, transport service and others are all part. So what the ministry was saying at that time was that let’s see how we can leverage what is already happening,” he indicated.

In November 2021, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mark Okraku-Mantey first broached the funeral tourism idea on Hitz FM, he quoted Dr. Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, former Minister for Tourism, Arts & Culture, who despite his stance as a Muslim, maintained a professional outlook regarding the issue.

“You [Christians] keep your bodies [corpse], and there are things you do that can attract people to go to a particular town,” Mark had quoted Dr. Awal.

Later in 2023, Dr. Awal re-ignited the debate on the funeral tourism idea.

“We will find funerals at places where there are tourist attractions. When they finish the funeral, the people will be served local dishes and drinks including sobolo so that when we finish, we will bus them to these tourist attractions.

Ghanaians love funerals, and it’s voluntary. When there is a funeral here, we will announce that we can go to Bonwire. People are selling kente there, and when they go there, they will spend money.

“We are busing them for free, so when we go to that area, there are restaurants there; they will buy food; they will buy artefacts. They will enrich the local economy. So we will take advantage of funerals to deepen our cultural assets and thereby create jobs for our youth”, Dr. Awal had remarked.

At present, Ghana’s tourism industry has been touted as the second largest sector of Ghana’s economy.