Road Travel Dominates Same-Day Cross-Border Trips — GSS
By Praisebell Rosemond Larbi
The 2023 Domestic and Outbound Tourism Survey (DOTS) released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) offers revealing insights into same-day cross-border travel by Ghanaians, showing that road transport, especially mini-buses and Motorcycles, remains the principal mode of travel.
According to the report, a total of 77,501 outbound same-day trips were recorded in 2023, and travellers spent approximately GH¢59.8 million during these trips, with about 95 per cent of that expenditure occurring on-trip rather than pre-trip.
GSS reports that buses, mini-vans, and Motorcycles were the most used modes of transport” for same-day outbound trips. Moreover, “almost all same-day trips were by road, reflecting how central our land borders are.” This heavy reliance on road transport is consistent with the fact that many of the same-day journeys involve neighbouring countries, where land crossings are feasible, cost-effective, and convenient.
The report highlights that the neighbouring country Togo emerged as the most frequent destination in 2023 and also the country where travellers recorded the highest on-trip expenditure. Purpose-wise, business and professional travel accounted for about 34 per cent of these trips, followed by trips for funerals at approximately 23 per cent.
The data suggest three key implications, including transport infrastructure and border-mobility matters given the dominance of road travel, especially by mini-bus/mini-van and even bicycle. Improving border roads, transit hubs, and inter-regional links could facilitate smoother same-day travel.
Secondly, short-haul cross-border mobility is significant, with high spending (GH¢ ~60 million) and large volumes of travellers. Same-day trips play a meaningful role in regional trade, social ties, and tourism flows. Finally, there is an opportunity to capture more value: since spending largely happens on-trip, there is potential to design services, transport linkages, and tourism products that retain more of that value.
The report’s findings point to several action areas, such as enhancing the efficiency and attractiveness of land-border crossings and road transport options (including minibuses, shared transport, bicycles) to support smoother same-day travel, and developing tailored short-trip packages for cross-border travellers (especially to Togo and other neighbouring states) that integrate local Ghanaian services, shopping, culture, and transport to boost value capture.
It also notes the need to encourage transport operators, tour agencies, and hospitality stakeholders to collaborate in creating reliable mini-bus/van/bicycle-based itineraries for same-day cross-border travel.
Additionally, monitoring and improving data collection for same-day travel flows is recommended to better understand modal splits, spending patterns, consumer behaviour, and destination linkages. In summary, the GSS’s 2023 report underlines that while air and overnight travel often draw most attention, road-based same-day cross-border mobility remains a robust and under-leveraged segment, with mini-buses, vans, and bicycles at the centre of that movement in Ghana’s regional travel economy, within Ghana’s economy rather than simply linking outward flows.
