Invest in customer service delivery - GTA boss urges hoteliers

Hotel operators across the country have been advised to invest more resources into customer service delivery in order to grow the country’s tourism industry. 

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Akwasi Agyeman, who gave the advice, said although the country, over the years, had been touted as a very hospitable destination, most often than not many hotels had an issue of customer service.

“So I want to urge management to take service delivery as a critical value add to the offerings they have here and to do that means a lot of training, right recruitment, and a lot of coordination with other agencies and institutions in the value chain”, he said

Mr Agyeman said this at the official opening of a hotel apartment complex, The Alexander Palace, in Accra.

Present at the event were stakeholders of the industry and actors in the tourism value chain including representatives from regulatory bodies, hotels association, the car rental association, Tour Operators Union of Ghana (TOUGHA), among others.

Alexander Palace is a 24-bedroom Apartment Hotel situated in Adenta with the main goal of offering guests a royal-style accommodation while ensuring their safety, comfort, and well-being. 

Safety, compliance

Mr Agyeman also urged hotel operators to prioritise the health and safety of their customers as it was tied to service delivery, adding that it was one of the issues that kept recurring on the authority’s radar.

“A few times, we have had incidents where people will come into a hotel and fall sick or there are theft cases which clearly show that sometimes operators do not focus on that”, he explained.

He urged them to comply with regulations to avoid unnecessary confrontations with the law to ensure that the industry and the entire sector thrived and assured that the GTA was working with the Hotels Association and the parliamentary select committee on trade, industry and tourism to reduce over regulation. 

Commitment  

For his part, a Deputy Minister of Tourism Arts and Culture (MoTAC), Mark Okraku-Mantey, said the government was committed to making the country the tourism hub of the continent adding that there had already been figures indicating that “Ghana was number one in West Africa now.”

“We cannot make this happen without the private sector so whenever we see edifices like this we are excited because we know you have added one asset to some of the assets we have been waiting for”, he added.

He, therefore, appealed to the management of the hotel to adhere to a strict maintenance culture that would ensure sustainability and continue to attract foreigners into the country and contribute to its socio-economic development. 

Tax reduction

The Managing Director of the hotel, Samira Seyram Mohammed, said the management was passionate about giving back to the community and the country through the provision of employment and the attraction of expatriates and to boost tourism as a whole to generate income for the country.

Ms Mohammed, however, called on the government to consider reducing the taxes and levies hotel operators had to pay, adding that they were the main reason people complained about hotels in Ghana being too expensive.