Akwasi Agyemang, CEO of Ghana Tourism Authority
Businesses in the hospitality industry in Accra have reinforced safety measures in line with both local and global health directives to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).
A visit to some hospitality centres by Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Tuesday saw a dramatic adjustment of frontline operations, as some of the hotels, restaurants, fast food and indigenous food joints have all introduced measures to protect staff and patrons.
All of the hotels visited, which included Tang Palace Hotel, Marriot Hotel, Alisa Hotel, Holiday Inn, Africa Regent, Airport View, AH Hotel, Airport West, Tomreik Hotel, Green Oak Hotel, and East Gate among others, had instituted COVID-19 safety measures.
Some of the safety measures included provision of hand sanitizers at the frontage for people to use before entering, provision of gloves and masks for staff and public education posters placed at vantage points.
GNA observed that at the Buka Restaurant as well as other centres, in addition to the provision of hand sanitizers, they had adopted social distancing sitting arrangement to ensure that customers were protected. “We have also detailed a staff whose duty is to sanitize all door handles and other surfaces every 30 minutes to ensure that any particles or droplets are cleared immediately,” an official told GNA.
Many of the managers told GNA that COVID-19 was having a major impact on their business as customers continued to cancel conferences and other social events booked earlier.
“The hotel industry is in distress, as our source of income is dwindling at a fast rate, our overhead costs has increased astronomically as the issues of sanitizers, gloves and masks has become a major commodity on our purchasing list, which we never anticipated or budgeted for,” a manager said.
Other hotels have already started cutting down staff whilst others are monitoring the business environment for the next four weeks to adopt appropriate measures on the management of staff.