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Chiamaka Ajeamo
Hospitality experts have unanimously blamed multiple taxation, levies and the high rate of unemployment in Nigeria as principal factors hampering the growth of hospitality industry.
This was even as they stated that poor and substandard hospitality service delivery in Nigeria is a consequence of the inability of employers to train, invest in and cater for the welfare of their workers, stressing that unless the narrative is changed, service delivery would remain poor.
Speaking at the Hotel Expo, an annual exhibition of sales and conference for the hospitality community, in Lagos, the Managing Director, Hotel Expo Nigeria, Jonathan Hanson, said Nigeria’s hospitality industry is one of the core sectors of the economy aside oil and gas, that will boost its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) if the government fully supports it given that it is currently the highest employer of labour in Africa. The government needs to realise that hospitality is a core sector that will boost the economy. This is the right time to diversify our income, improve the country’s GDP through it and not solely focus on oil and gas. Hospitality in Nigeria has the highest rate of employment in Africa. This means that if stakeholders and the government pay more focus to it, more people will be employed.
“However, the industry is plagued with the challenge of multiple taxations and levies and the unemployment rate allows business owners to get cheap and unprofessional workers. In Dubai, owners of hospitality businesses run their business with ease and multiple tax incomes will never halt their business but the case is different in Nigeria.
Hotel owners in Nigeria are a government on their own in that they provide virtually all the resources needed for the smooth operations of the business ranging from power supply to other expenditures and still face the issue of multiple taxation by the government.
This is the major killer of most businesses in the industry,” he declared. Earlier on, discussing the theme, “Discovering Hospitality: A Call for Better Hospitality Service Delivery”, the panelists assented that for a better service delivery to take place, employers must first recruit passionate workers, provide trainings, create a sane working environment, appreciate and equally expose the employees to the kind of experience they want them to give out to clients, adding that when all these are done, quality service delivery will be seamless.
