Minister for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Catherine Afeku has said that the introduction of the Single Window Destination Window project in the tourism sector will help deal with the challenge of revenue loss in the industry.
The Single Window Destination project is a single technological platform made up of different components where all sector players can tap in and have a one stop shop for the promotion of the destination Ghana.
The platform will include automative services will enable the sector retrieve its 1% levy from tourists and visitors once they register all their details.
Speaking at the sidelines of the launch of the project, Catherine Afeku explained that the Single Window Destination will help deal with the current situation where government is unable to trace its yearly revenues from hotels particularly because the monies have to be manually submitted to the banks.
“It is an opportunity to work with the tourism sector to improve on service delivery using automative services especially when you go to hotels, how we collect our levy is a challenge. The operators will physically have to go to a bank to deposit what they will physically claim to be what they have collected in a year. Government is losing out on revenue so once you automate these processes, everytime a guest checks in, that 1% of the tourism levy will be automatically collected and at the end of the month, it will be automatically deposited in government coffers”, she explained.
The revenue generation subsequently, will be channeled into the building of more hotels which will create more jobs. According to Mrs. Afeku, the revenue will also be directed at training service operators to improve service delivery significantly and consequently attract more tourists and visitors to patronize their institutions.
“It will create jobs because once government gets more revenue through this sector, you can improve on training and we can also improve on our service delivery as a government”.
She explained that monitoring systems will also be encapsulated on the platform such that visitors and tourists will be able to give direct feedback about the facilities they use to the Ghana Tourism Authority. This information will then be analysed and the appropriate actions taken from there.
“They will have the monitoring and evaluation component of this technology because if a client comes into a hotel and they have a platform where they can write; I didn’t get towels, it automatically comes to GTA and then we will be able to pinpoint that this hotel did not deliver the service as required and they will have an opportunity to improve their services”.
The platform among other things will also have portals containing information about the country’s tourist resources and sites, hotels, safety information about the country.
The Single Window Destination project is targeted at promoting excellence in the tourism industry by raising the standards of hospitality agencies and improving their services.
The project also seeks to address challenges in the country’s tourism and hospitality sector. The project among other things, will generate revenue for the Ghana Tourism Authority, provide visibility for the Authority, improve data collection, and generally improve standards in the sector, making it attractive for investors and tourists.
