Save the hotel industry

Honourable, I am very sorry to disturb your peace and quiet but there is this very disturbing news from your office in Koforidua, Eastern Region. According to updates in the media, the Ghana Tourism Authority in the Eastern Region has closed down as many as 23 hotels!!! Unbelievable. Twenty-three hotels? Why? Do you want to collapse the tourism industry completely in the region?

Let me begin by asking a simple question: When a policeman sees a taxi being ran without a road worthy certificate, does the police seize the taxi or take the driver to court?

 If you have seen a hotel operating without license, do you close down the hotel or you issue summons to the operator to come to court?

When I was a student at Achimota School in the early 70’s, one day, a senior said at a scripture union meeting that God revealed to him in a dream that our woes as a nation could be solved through tourism.

Those days I was a teenager and I laughed in my head. How can Ghana’s economic problems be solved through tourism ?

I kept laughing until sometime in 1992, when the then Deputy Minister of  Tourism Mr Owuraku Amofa, in a speech at the National Theatre said  tourism was the nations second highest foreign exchange earner!

Tourism? What is tourism?

It is simply visitors coming over to your place for excursion. We have domestic and external tourism. Domestic tourism involves the local visitors in Ghana through funerals, festivals, conferences among others.

In Ghana  especially among the Akan communities, there is an elaborate system of funerals. When a person of substance dies, they renovate the house, they give the road to the village a facelift and they prepare the village or community to receive hundreds of people who will attend the funeral.

The mourners come in their teeming numbers and that day, market women, taxi drivers, hawkers and chop bars all get full patronage.The various guest houses in the area are usually filled to capacity with patrons.

The same thing can be said of festivals – the Aboakyer at Winneba, Asafotufiam at Ada, Kundum at Kikan, Akwantuekesee in Koforidua and many others.

Talk of conferences – lawyers conference, medical association, surveyors and so on – all these bring visitors to an area and they patronise the tourist reception centres – hotels, chop bars, drinking bars among others.

Then we have the external tourists – that is foreigners who want to come to Ghana for sightseeing.

Honourable, when you close down as many as 23 hotels, what are you doing? You are killing the industry!

The reason given for the closure of the affected hotels is that they do not have renewed operating licenses. Why? Why is it that they do not have valid licenses?

The answer is that the conditions are draconian.

They want this, they want that. They want literally first class standards, but honourable is that practical?

Thanks to politics – I have visited every nook and cranny of this country and I can assure you when it is raining after a long travel in the night, all a visitor wants is a roof over his head – not a miniature La Palm Beach Hotel facility.

I remember in 2007 when my entourage arrived at Dambai on a late Saturday night to sleep in the only hotel at the time in that community. They gave me the best room available, and I woke up at 3 a.m. desperately wanting to visit the loo to discharge liquid waste – there was no urinal available – oh God – how I suffered that night!!!

By contrast, I remember one night when I visited the M Plaza Hotel for a bottle of “coke” – I mean Coca Cola and they charged me in those days 12,000 cedis a bottle – when on the market it was 2,000 cedis. Upon enquires, a rather undiplomatic barman told me “Massa, if you don’t have money, don’t come to M Plaza!!!”

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Classes

In the hotel industry, we have five star hotels such as KEMPINSKI where a mere bottle of ordinary water can sell for as much as GH¢10!!! We have four  and three star hotels and down the line.

Honourable, why not introduce classes into the guest houses licensing operations in the country?

Class A facility can be a guest house or a hotel that meets all the standards – restaurant, ventilation, swimming pool, Internet, whatever – the highest in the business.

Class B facility will not be so executive, down the line to even a Class F or Class G facility – and it can be insisted that every hotel or guest house must have its class boldly exhibited at the front.

What this means is that if you are under pressure and you know that this is Class G facility and you enter to sleep there, you should not complain of mosquitoes or sharing the public toilet with other guests.

If you have money, look for Class A or Class B or your pocket level hotel.

And you know, honourable, when a man at a wake has succeeded in warming his way into the heart of a woman, do you think he will ask whether this hotel facility is licensed or not licensed?

They will operate underground! So why not classify them downwards and collect your license fees and keep them in business?

Which serious proprietor of a hotel will not want his or her hotel to be like that of Movenpick, Ambassador or Tang Palace? But we all start small small-so let me open Afeku Lodge at Winneba Junction starting as Class F facility. With time, as patronage improves, I will upgrade the standard then reclassify to Class D or C or God willing in five years hit Class A!!!

Is that not preferable rather than closing down the entire facility? Twenty-three hotels closed down? That means conservatively at least 100 workers would lose their jobs - do you want our New Patriotic Party (NPP)  government to be branded as Oguadwuma government (destroyer)?

I believe most sincerely that tourism can be a major source of revenue to the consolidated fund.

Why not encourage all Ghanaian hotels to serve fufu, Ampesi and TZ as part of their daily menu? Ten years ago, said casually – “Captain, the fufu at La Palm Beach Hotel is very nice – just GH¢50 a plate.”

I laughed at his comment. I should go and spend old 500,000 cedis just for fufu lunch when at “Don’t Mind Your Wife Chop bar” behind the taxi rank I can bloat with just GH¢10 !!

Honourable, encourage all hotels and guest houses to host weekly live bands, weekly theatre performance and weekly cultural shows – imagine the employment opportunities that will generate and quality of life and increment in life expectancy!!!

I beg you honourable, reopen those 23 hotels and give a moratorium of three months for all of them to acquire valid operation licenses or face prosecution.

Honourable, save the hotel industry and tourism!!!!