Accra hotels on journey to recovery
he luxury bus ride along the beautiful West Coast was delightfully picturesque and fascinating being his first on the route. Basilica Obinzu, a businessman arrived Accra at night and the Ghanaian capital beckoned alluringly. Having no family and acquaintance to accommodate him, he decided to lodge in one of the several hotels in the city.
His business associate, whom he had come to meet for consultation highly recommended to him a three-star hotel at the Central Accra. Enthusiastically he called a taxi as he bade his seat mate goodbye. “I am off to the hotel where I will be lodging”. Barely 30 minutes later, he returned visibly disappointed. “The hotel is fully booked. I tried two near-by hotels and the story was the same,” he said.
Basilica’s experience typified the hitherto booming nature of hotel business in Accra. Buoyed by the nascent oil and gas sector and a stable democracy, the fast growing economy was witnessing enormous foreign presence.
From the Kotoka International Airport, which was daily besieged by visitors to the tall buildings sprouting in several parts of the city, the teeming visitors at the holiday resorts, the city evidently was a treasure the world desired.
The flourishing hotel industry catered for the cocktail of business conferences and teeming tourists visiting Accra to explore either the investment environment or to unwind in the serene environment.
But 2014 will arguably go down as one of the worst years in Ghana’s recent history. The global recession added to government’s fiscal indiscipline put pressure on the economy. It triggered the fall of the cedi against other major currencies.
The free-fall of the local currency, epileptic power supply and spiraling inflation eroded investors’ confidence in the economy and a combination of government policy direction impacted negatively on the industry.
The General Manager of upscale, Holiday Inn, Mr. Bruce Potter recounts, “Business has been growing by 10 percent from 2008. We hit plateau last year, February and the year was looking strong. We have generated a lot of interest, because of the oil and sustained democracy in Ghana.
“But it took a turn last year when the Bank of Ghana started to enforce some restrictions on the dollar/cedi that had a big blow on business,” he explained.
Another factor that impaired business in the industry was the outbreak of Ebola Virus Disease. Ghana never recorded a case of the disease, but the government placed a ban on international conferences, as a preemptive measure to keep the country free, the decision almost comatose the industry, according practitioners.
Potter, who is also the Vice President of Ghana Hotels Association, revealed that the hotels lost millions of dollars within weeks, even as he reeled out statistics to buttress the huge impact of the embargo placed on international conferences.
“Some of the hotels lost 70 percent of business in one week. So the average occupancy in the city dropped by 20 percent in August. So August, September, October, November, Accra was actually doing 20 percent on normal room occupancy, never minding the conferences, meetings and banqueting cancellations,” he disclosed.
Dora Naana Amoah Padi, Sales Coordinator, Conferences and Banqueting, La Palm Royal Beach Hotel corroborated the fact that Ebola was a setback for business.
“Business had been good, but because of the Ebola scarce towards the end of last year, patronage went down. Usually during Christmas we have a lot of families coming to spend the holiday, but Ebola scare has minimized this kind of patronage,” she posited. Touted as
Continued on Page 36