African Govts should be intentional about promoting Tourism & Travel
Mr. Nana Kwame Yeboah-Afari, the Executive Director, Royal Senchi Resort in Akosombo, Ghana, in this interview with OLUSEGUN KOIKI, speaks on the various bottlenecks militating tourism and air travels in West Africa, government policies and the way out. Excerpts:
The Royal Senchi Resort is one of the major tourism facilities in Ghana, how have you fared 10 years after setting up this facility?
First, it costs money to keep up the facilities at the resort; proper maintenance of 35 acres of land is not a joke, but we will continue to do this and I want to appeal to you to help us through your various platforms to enhance the marketing of our products.
Just recently, Alhaji Aliko Dangote complained about the challenges of flying within Africa.
The fact remains that he is not alone in this challenge. Visa issue on the continent is a major constraint and the crisis at the border also calls for concerns.
This is not good enough for Africa if we want to promote tourism. I have had a lot of experiences going through various borders like Togo, Cote D’Ivoire and others. What I can say is that it is not pleasant. If you have money to throw around, you go through the borders easily, but for day-to-day people, it’s very difficult to navigate this.
It is always good to see collaboration within Africans and I say this with a lot of passion because too often, we see a lot of competition among us when we should have collaborated and made our products bigger. If we collaborate, it would still be enough for everybody. It is in our collective interest to put together our resources to be able to host large meetings.
But, sometimes, we see ourselves as competitors to the extent that we don’t want to share anything at all.
There are a lot of things that we can do together; we can do cross training, menus, bushmeat and others just to keep the interest going.
The Southern African countries collaborate very well and they don’t see themselves as competitors.
Sir, what are the hoteliers in Ghana for instance doing to relax some of these bottlenecks you talked about at the borders?
It is unfortunate that you spend hours at the borders trying to cross to another country. I have been directly affected by this, too.
I am not happy with the frustration that the travellers experience at the borders, but I think we are working on it.
However, most of the tourists come by flights, but I believe if we are able to address the challenges at various land borders, it will make it easier for more tourists to come to Ghana and other countries within the West African region.
What is the percentage of visitors to this resort annually from Europe and African countries?
Presently, we have about 80 per cent of Africans patronising our resort. About 60 per cent of that 80 per cent are Ghanaians, 40 per cent are other African countries and I would say that 80 per cent of that 40 per cent is Nigeria.
In recent times, we have had a lot of visitors from Togo as well, especially their corporate organisations do come here for different activities.
Some hotels and resorts partner with airlines and tour operators to enhance patronage, is your company equally doing this?
The fact remains that you cannot do this kind of a business without partnering with others. So, we have relationships especially with many of the travel and tours companies in Ghana.
The truth is you have to first and foremost start your relationship from home.
The next place we are doing this is Nigeria. You cannot do anything on this continent without the involvement of Nigeria.
On airlines’ collaboration, not much has been done because the airlines are often interested in cities, but in terms of presence on the airlines, talking about inflight magazines, internal marketing with the airlines, we do that regularly.
We also did the same with Arik Air until the airline stopped flying to Ghana. The biggest airline out of Nigeria to Ghana now is Air Peace. We will need to collaborate with the airline as well.
What have you done to improve the eco-friendly intervention at this resort?
This is a very challenging thing, but we have managed to work around it. Just imagine about 150-200 toilets flushing at the same time; it is a big issue.
So, what we have designed is that everything comes to the treatment plant and it becomes liquid and passes through our irrigation system to irrigate the 35 acres that we have here.
We also have the technology for water treatment and this is highly efficient and also eco-friendly.
The water is taken from the lake here and it runs through the system. Also, for the water hitting equipment, we have a gas that is used to hit the water, while the backup is solar energy. We ensure that if you open your taps and you need hot water, within 10 to 15 seconds, you will have what you want. It’s all about solar and gas.
We also have a solar farm here, which provides about 10 per cent of energy here, except that it is very costly at the moment.
One of the problems that we have is that we can produce more than we even require, but it can’t feed into the electricity system or our electricity company to give us rebates or whatever.
At the moment that is not possible. The thing is you just have to keep to your budget and keep what you can do sustainably.
Also, look at the rooms; the fact that we even use thatch to keep the rooms cool and the air conditions are not under too much pressure.
Even, the piping of the air conditions in the rooms are in compliance with the regulations that are supposed to be reviewed in the next 20 years or so. Everything we do here is eco-friendly.
What is your company doing to ensure that some of your guests don’t use your facilities for courier of drugs and other illicit substances?
We have an effective security management system in place to prevent such bad occurrences here, but you can understand that there is a limit you can go about this because these are being carried out by your own guests who bring in a lot of people and substances.
As much as possible, it is not a problem here because we always do the needful when such arises. I don’t see it as a major issue like we have in Accra and others.
What is your company doing concerning Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSRs) in its immediate community?
We do a lot of that here; we collaborate with lots of associations, especially schools within the vicinity.
Here, our focus is on education because ultimately, the hotel also benefits from such. Apart from that, we also encourage our staff to continue to learn.
We encourage our staff to embark on their first degree and also their master’s degree. We also pay the school fees of some of our staff who do well in their educational pursuit.
Our staff are largely appreciative of what we do, especially when it comes to their educational pursuit.
What are your plans for business expansion out of the present location?
The fact is that doing business in Ghana, the costs of operations are so high unlike in other places.
We import poultry products from Brazil, dairy products from Holland and other places; rice is also imported from Nigeria. That is a tragedy as far as I am concerned because if you go across this place, all the lands here are good for planting rice.
We are always challenged on so many fronts. If we compare ourselves to people from Kenya, Mauritius, South Africa or Botswana and other places like that, their cost of operation is low. They can afford to charge some rates, but we cannot do that here.
When we first started about a decade ago, our ultimate plan was to have a group of Senchi all over West Africa, but 10 years on, I don’t think the plan is still on unless things change drastically.
Some of these products are what we can do if we have the will, which is lacking at the moment.
