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The Ghana Hotels Association (GHA) has hinted at its intention to break away from the Ghana Tourism Federation (GHATOF) by end of this month to fully concentrate on the hospitality industry.

Dr Edward Ackah-Nyamike, President of the Ghana Hotels Association, speaking in an interview on Tuesday said the decision to break away from the Federation was taken somewhere in 2018 and it was purposely for the Association to focus fully on hospitality as the Federation was more focused on tourism.

“Mind you, hospitality as an industry can be very independent and it can be very exclusive. Technically, we don’t need tourism to survive, however, we can do a lot with tourism”, he stated when he announced the breakaway.

He noted that the Association intended to ratify its decision during the next National Executive Council Meeting (NEC) in Tamale, later in the month.

Dr Ackah-Nyamike however said that with the forming of the Confederation, NEC would advise on that, but it would be done in the shortest possible time not to leave so much gap.

He added that the Association wanted to put hospitality in its rightful place in the scheme of things in this country, hence, breaking away and forming a new confederation was the way to go.

“With regards to the Federation, we are exiting to form a new Hospitality Federation that will focus on hospitality but where there is the need for collaboration with GHATOF we will do that”, he said.

 “We want to also look beyond tourism because our issues and challenges are very different from tourism issues, but we are getting to a point where the whole talk has been on tourism, and we are losing grip on hospitality,” he explained.

He said, “as the name implies GHATOF appears to be focusing more on tourism, but we are in the hospitality business, and we want to begin to get the hospitality industry to take on its role as an industry devoid of all the ‘too much focus on tourism.”

“It is assumed that once there is tourism, there is hospitality, but that is not the case, and we think that over the years leadership has been focusing too much on tourism.”

He noted that the GHA was of the view that over the years, the hospitality industry had been marginalized, so the breakaway would allow for focus, and a clear vision and purpose.

“As the president of GHA, I am a member of the Council for GHATOF, and we have been very supportive and active, but we have come to the crossroad where we have realized that it was the best decision taken four years ago and we need to implement it”, he noted.