Hotels

THE Ghana Tourist Board has called on operators of hotels in the country to improve their standards of operations to enable the country to achieve its aim of becoming the preferred conference and tourism destination in the sub-region.
It said the present standards of operation of many up-market hotels in particular were unacceptable and warned of drastic actions against them if they continued to operate below approved standards.
Mr Martin Mireku, the Executive Director of the board, who made the call in Accra yesterday, said the board had begun a nationwide random inspection of facilities of hotels and would not hesitate to reduce the status of those found to be operating below standards.
At the National Executive Council Meeting of the Ghana Hotels Association in Accra, Mr Mireku said the board’s preliminary investigations revealed that some hotels were being highly complacent while others hardly maintained their facilities.
These concerns are being raised at a time when the country is fast becoming the preferred international conference destination, having hosted high-profile conferences of the United Nations and the African Union last year among many others.
Mr Mireku also brought to the fore, the lack of proper cleaning of the facilities, supervision, irregular use of mandatory registers and non-submission of monthly guest returns to the board.
Mr Mireku said the board was under no obligation to alert the hotels before embarking on any inspection and asked them to be on the lookout at all times by keeping to the standards.
He said it was unfortunate that many hotels waited for many years before undertaking a refurbishment of their facilities.
“Normally, this should be done after every five years,” he said, and added that this was not the case in Ghana as many sometimes did not do any renovations at all or after 10 years.
Mr Mireku said the board had made proposals for service standards and training models for the hotel industry and expressed the hope that this would be given the needed support to enable it to come to fruition to transform the sector.
The National President of the association, Nana Kofi Adjei Twinin, who is also the Executive Director of Mac Dic Hotel, urged the new administration to keep to its promise of helping to transform the hospitality industry.
He said the industry was capable of contributing more to national development and reiterated the resolve of the association to work to improve standards and training of their staff.
Professor Stephen Adei, a former Rector of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA), told the members of the association that it was useful to adhere to standards in the hospitality industry.
He also asked members to keep proper account books, since they could rely on that to raise loans from the banks to enhance their businesses.
The Deputy Chief Fire Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service, Mr Kru Agyako Atobra, asked the members of the association to ensure at all times that their facilities had functional firefighting to be able to keep fire under control anytime the unexpected happened.
He said it was also necessary for them to ensure that there were fire alarms, lights and other equipment available to guide their clients when there was any fires.
Mr Herbert Friese, Vice-President of Golden Tulip, West Africa, announced that the hotel would undergo a compressive refurbishment from next Monday.
As a result, he said one third of the hotel would be closed every day for works to start and to enable the works to proceed uninterrupted.