Address challenges of hotel industry - Association tells govt

The Ghana Hotels Association (GHA) has called on the government to address pertinent issues in the hotel industry, such as the disjointed tourism and hospitality training regime, the uncoordinated and non-consultative regulation of the sector, the lack of an affirmative action to support the industry and the unfair disbursement of the Tourism Development Fund.

Another important matter that required urgent attention, according to the association, was the absence of a legislative instrument (LI) on the Copyright Act and the consequent harassment of its members by the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO) and the Audio Visual Rights Society of Ghana (ARSOG).

Press conference

Addressing a press conference in Accra yesterday, the President of the GHA, Dr Edward Ackah-Nyameke, said the hotel industry in Ghana was heavily regulated, adding that before commencing operations, hotels were required to acquire 10 different permits from various organisations, including the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA), the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and the Ghana Police Service.

Apart from that, he said, hotels were expected to provide regular information on foreign lodgers to the Ghana Immigration Service.

He said a major challenge faced, with regard to the activities of the regulatory bodies, was the obvious lack of coordination and cooperation among them.

"Each agency works almost absolutely independent of the others, even though they all deal with the same industry.

Impact

‘’The consequences of this is the duplication of functions that we often see at our hotels and the indiscriminate increases in licence fees by the individual agencies, without considering its impact on the total quantum paid by hotels,” he said.
According to Dr Ackah-Nyameke, hoteliers received no value for money for all the payments made to most of the regulatory bodies, while there was also lack of consistency in the application of the laws that governed the regulatory bodies.

A typical example, he stated, concerned the regional offices of the EPA, which included the number of chairs in hotels and restaurants in the computation for the issuance of EPA permits, when the LI governing the matter did not suggest that.

Absence of LI

He said the issue of the payment of royalties to GHAMRO and ARSOG had generated some controversy in recent times, adding that calls on the government to intervene had fallen on deaf ears.

According to him, while GHAMRO and ARSOG insisted on using the number of rooms in a hotel and other parameters to calculate royalties, the GHA was of the view that doing so would contravene the Copyright Act, 2005 (Act 690).

He said in spite of the fact that the attention of the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, and the Office of the Copyright Administrator had been drawn to the problem, nothing had changed.

The two rights organisations, he said, continued to harass members of the GHA and collected outrageous royalties from them.

Affirmative Action

Dr Ackah-Nyameke said hotel operation was unique in the sense that most of the recurring expenses were constant and high, irrespective of the level of occupancy.

That, he added, contributed to the high cost of hotel operations in the country and consequently the high room rates.

To shed the negative tag of high hotel rates which Ghana had, he said, the government must consider the hotel sub-sector as a special tourism area and reduce the amounts of money paid as taxes, fees for regulatory permits, import duties, among others.

Tourism Development Fund

On the Tourism Development Fund, he noted that although hotels were the largest contributors, its disbursement did not benefit them, saying the fund was rather utilised by the GTA and other agencies.

"Is it too much to demand that a portion of the fund be used to support the tourism trade associations to perform effectively and thereby support the fund to grow? Is it too much to demand that a portion of the fund be used to grant soft loans to industry players to expand their businesses? Is it too much to demand that a portion of the fund be used to substantially subsidise training for personnel in the industry, as is done in other countries?" he asked.

He urged the GTA to disburse the fund in a more structured and fair manner.

Disjointed tourism and hospitality training regime

Dr Ackah-Nyameke dwelt extensively on the training of staff of the hotel sub-sector, which he said was meant to ensure the provision of quality service, and added that the current training regime was disjointed.

He said instead of building new hotel training schools, as recommended by the government, the money should be channelled into supporting existing ones.

He said the declaration of 2019 as the "Year of Return" by President Nana Akufo-Addo called for the institution of measures to make the hotel industry in Ghana thrive.