Hoteliers apprehensive about power challenges in 2017

The Ghana Hotels Association has expressed fear of a recurrence of unstable power supply within the first quarter of the year 2017.

The challenge that confronted the country’s power sector between 2012 and 2016 affected most sectors of the economy.

Like other sectors, some hotels were compelled to shut down over operational challenges.

The hotel subsector also recorded a negative growth of 2.2 percent.

The Greater Accra Regional Chairman of the Ghana Hotels Association, Dr. Edward Ackah Nyamekye Junior told Citi Business News members of the association would not want to experience such outages within the first quarter to save their industry.

“We are getting scared with some of the reports we are getting now. There is some information making rounds that if the country is not careful, we may go back to another power crisis so we are pleading with the government to ensure that this does not happen because we don’t want to go through that experience again at all,” he stated.

In the hoteliers’ view, the challenge of low sales that normally characterizes the first quarter of every year risk worsening should the power crisis remain unresolved.

“It affected us negatively some hotels had to close down some hotels had to lay off workers and the consequences of that crisis still lingers on that is we are pleading with the government to ensure that  their concern is with the energy sector so that we will have continuous power to grow our businesses,” Dr. Ackah added.

By: Anita Arthur/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana