By Deborah Asantewaah SARFO
The Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) is embarking in a survey to evaluate how registered and non-registered commercial accommodation units offered to domestic and foreign guests contribute to the entire tourism ecosystem and gross domestic product (GDP).
This will bring to light a concrete data on the contribution of commercial accommodation units that provide short stay accommodation to the sub-sector.
According to the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) data from the International Air Travel Survey (2019-2023), tourist expenditure on accommodation ranges from 31 percent to 54 percent. Also, data from the 2023 December GH survey shows that the average tourist expenditure on accommodation was US$476.36 (34.61 percent), with a corresponding average length of stay of 17 nights for participants.
The Accommodation Unit Survey (AUS), scheduled for November 2024 – October 2025, will include the collection of data from registered and non-registered commercial accommodation units in all 261 districts and 16 administrative regions across the country.
The accommodation units include hotels, guest houses, budget hotels, hostels, home-stay, apartments and other accommodations from the list of 2024 Integrated Business Establishment Survey 1 (2024 IBES 1).
According to the Chairperson of the National Technical Advisory Committee of the AUS – Professor Kwaku Boakye, current data on the sector’s impact on tourism is anecdotal; hence, the need for this survey to provide factual and concrete data offering government the “true picture of the sector” to help in decision-making.
“We aim primarily to understand the contribution of the accommodation sub-sector to the broad tourism satellite account and, by extension, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). ….. All we know about the impact of the accommodation sub-sector is anecdotal. We do not have hard fact figures and this is what this survey seeks to produce,” he noted.
He made this known at the launch of the AUS’s fieldwork and the main training closing ceremony held in Winneba, Central Region.
The survey will ensure a comprehensive data set available for the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), inform how the accommodation sub-sector is performing throughout the year and assist in identifying key trends in the tourism sector.
Prof. Boakye added that the AUS is one of the four surveys being conducted to understand the broader picture of tourism in the country, with the first one being the Ghana International Travellers’ Survey, followed by the Domestic Outbound Tourism Survey, then the AUS and the fourth, Tourism Supply Establishment Survey (TSES) – to be conducted from March 2025 – June 2025.
Sharing some statistics on the impact of tourism accommodation, the Director of Research, Monitoring and Evaluation at the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA), Dr. Spencer Doku, referencing the United Nations Tourism, said globally the sector contributed significantly to tourism in 2023, reaching an estimated value of US$1.4trillion.
He admitted that GTA’s data from its annual inspection and survey “is limited in terms scope and depth, unacceptable for tourism report and deficient for international comparison analysis”.
A total of one hundred and thirteen (113) field workers made up of 90 interviewers and 23 supervisors have been trained and will be deployed to work in 1077 accommodation units. These field assistants will be on the beat once a month to collect data electronically using CAPI.
The President of the Ghana Hotels Association, Dr. Edward Ackah-Nyamike, said actual data from the survey will influence the government to implement some of the association’s proposals and propel the sector’s growth.
“Other times, when we advocate for more investment in the industry in terms of the roads to the tourism sites or reduction in taxes, they are not able to implement some of these suggestions probably because they think that the industry does not contribute that much. But such a study will establish the actual contribution of the industry and that will be helpful in terms of developing the tourism industry,” he noted.
Stakeholders of the survey, GTA, Ghana Hotels Association and Ghana Progressive Hotels Association, assured GSS of their support in ensuring a successful data collection.
