Ghana Tour Operators Offer a Model for Ancestry Trips

Ancestry tourism has experienced a significant boom in recent years. Locations, many in Europe, were attracting large numbers of visitors eager to explore places connected to their family history.

But one country outside of Europe, in particular, has especially benefited from this growing popularity. Spurred by the success of the Year of Return, tour operators in Ghana have seen business surge beyond the 2019 initiative by increasingly promoting, not just family ties, but the cultural bounds travelers in the African diaspora have with an entire region so many people were cut off from by slavery. That interest is on the upswing again after the depths of the pandemic.

Tourism businesses in Ghana are heavily targeting members of the diaspora — especially those who are a part of an African American travel market growing in financial clout and increasingly eager to explore their ancestral homelands.

"We feel that given the wealth that African Americans and black Americans have, given that spending power, travel budgets of blacks in America, we felt that it's about time that we start that conversation that, instead of moving to any other destination, come back to where you came from," said Akwasi Agyeman, CEO of Ghana's Tourism