The Hospital Industry in Ghana is considering moving most of its business online by focusing more on e-commerce transactions.
The industry has been one of the hardest-hit sector of the economy by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Executive Secretary of the National Hospitality Association of Ghana Theodore Dzeble said the virtual operations may come at a bigger cost to the customer.
According to him, they will not want to burden the customer but they will consider the virtual operations to help them stay in business.
“It will help but it will come at a bigger cost to Ghanaians and we don’t want to necessarily place too many demands on our customers. If you are going to do virtual you are talking about delivery cost, the time it will cost you to deliver and how many people are asking for the delivery anyway. Whereas you are talking about coming together…”
He stated that the ideal hospitality experience is being served in a very serene environment and they will really want to keep that.
“The restaurant is about coming together, it relaxing with an ambience of quietude with some music at the background and being served. Talking to each other I mean that’s our hospitality that is what we know. We can cut down numbers and observe social distancing and even that one comes at a cost to the industry.”
Minister assures tourism, hospitality sector of govt’s support
The Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi has also assured the tourism and hospitality sector of government’s support post-Covid-19.
According to the Minister, the sector will benefit from the 600 million cedis stimulus package set aside to support Small and Medium Enterprises.
Speaking to some stakeholders in the industry, the Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, said a meeting has been arranged with the National Board for Small Scale Industries to outline the modalities on how one can apply for the funds.
“The government is working very hard to support the sector because they recognize the importance of the tourism sector to the economy. And the initial support which has come in from government being the 600 million Ghana cedis support has been dedicated to the small and medium enterprises sector because they recognize that you are really suffering and you need that support to thrive,” she said.
“So we are going to engage the National Board for Small Scale Enterprise which will be at the forefront of the disbursement of this facility. We are going to have them to take you through the processes that you need to go through in order to access that facility so that in the interim even as we are waiting for the major interventions for the sector from the government after COVID-19, you will have some support during this very difficult period,” she added.
