Foreign tourists stay longer as domestic guests dominate Ghana’s accommodation market – GSS

Domestic travellers continue to dominate Ghana’s accommodation market, but foreign visitors tend to stay significantly longer, highlighting the importance of increasing the length of stay to deepen tourism’s contribution to the wider economy.

This is contained in the Ghana Statistical Service’s (GSS) Accommodation Unit Survey covering November 2024 to February 2025.

The survey found that domestic guests accounted for the overwhelming majority of guests recorded across accommodation establishments during the period, with monthly domestic guest numbers ranging from about 1.87 million to 2.17 million.

By comparison, the number of foreign guests remained below 40,000 per month.

Despite the significantly lower volume, foreign guests generally recorded longer stays than domestic visitors, particularly in hotels, where foreign guests stayed for about three to four nights compared with approximately two nights for domestic hotel guests.

The findings suggest that measuring tourism performance solely by the number of visitors may not fully capture the sector’s economic potential.

According to the GSS, the duration of a visitor’s stay matters because longer stays create more opportunities for spending across accommodation, food, transport, entertainment and other tourism-related services.

The Service therefore points to the need for tourism businesses and destination managers to focus not only on attracting visitors but also on creating conditions and products that encourage them to stay longer.

“Visitor volume” alone, the report notes, does not provide a complete picture of tourism demand, as the length of stay influences the broader economic benefits generated by each visitor.

Domestic market presents opportunity

The dominance of domestic guests also provides an important market for accommodation operators and tourism businesses.

The GSS says domestic tourism should be treated as an important market in its own right, with accommodation providers, tour operators and destination managers encouraged to develop products that respond to domestic travel patterns.

These could include packages linked to attractions, cultural events, festivals, conferences and other travel purposes.

The report stresses, however, that greater focus on domestic tourism does not replace the importance of international visitors. Instead, the two markets play different roles, with domestic visitors providing substantial volume while foreign visitors in several accommodation categories record longer stays.

Turning visitors into longer stays

The GSS argues that encouraging visitors to extend their stays could increase demand for a wider range of services and spread tourism spending across local economies.

Longer stays can generate additional demand for accommodation, food, transportation, entertainment and cultural experiences, creating opportunities beyond the initial hotel booking.

The findings form part of Ghana’s first nationally representative longitudinal survey of short-stay accommodation activity, covering licensed and unlicensed establishments and providing data on accommodation capacity, utilisation, guest activity and financial performance.

The GSS cautions that the findings cover only four months of a planned 12-month data collection programme and should therefore be treated as an emerging baseline rather than evidence of long-term trends.