Fashola inaugurates committees to grade Lagos hotels

The Lagos state government has set up two committees to assess hotel facilities in the state and advise government on how to improve them.

Lagos State Governor, Mr. Babatunde Fashola (SAN), who inaugurated the committees for the grading and certification of hotels and hospitality facilities as well as for hearing and addressing grievances arising from the exercise saw the constitution of the committees as a positive step in re-energizing the industry.

The main Committee, Hotels Grading and Certification Committee, headed by Larry Segun-lean, is to grade and certify the hotels in terms of their standards as one, two, three, four or five star hotels while the second committee, the Appeal Committee, chaired by Mr. Gbolahan Elias, is to hear appeals and address complaints arising from the exercise.

In his remarks before inaugurating the two Committees, Governor Fashola said the decision of Government was informed by the need to create jobs through the proper grading and classification of hotels in the State pointing out that when properly graded and classified, the hospitality industry would the better for it as more tourists would be attracted to them thereby creating jobs for both practitioners and related industries.

Governor Fashola, who noted that the State has seen very rapid development in hotels and other hospitality facilities in the last six years, said this has happened as a result of deliberate Government policies aimed at expanding the economic frontiers of the State.

Apparently making reference to the recent Supreme Court Judgment which validated the Hotel Licensing Law of Lagos State as Amended and the Hotel Occupancy and Restaurant Consumption Law of the State, Governor Fashola declared, “It was clearly unacceptable for another arm of government or another tier of government to seek, as it were, to regulate an industry it did not help to build”.

“And for us, there is a longer story here, there is a bigger journey here, there is a larger dream here; to open up an economy that can create employment. Tourism and Hospitality in many parts of Africa are big sources of employment, job creation and earnings in terms of revenue strings”, the Governor said adding regrettably that “because the administrative regime was, at the best, unclear and at the worst really in disarray and because operators did not know which government it was safe to deal with, the industry has not grown to expectation.

Acknowledging that tourism traffic in Lagos has increased, Governor Fashola who put the number of visitors to Lagos last year at 2.2 million “by the ranking of a major financial service solution”, said even though that figure made Lagos the second most visited city in Africa, it was nothing compared to Dubai which, according to him, “was receiving close to 20, 30 million visitors”.

“Now, this is a larger market than Dubai in terms of population. Now, Egypt and some other parts of Africa, Mali, Timbuktu are in crisis and, as sad as it may be, they provide opportunities for us to take the tourism business. Tourists are not going there but where are they going? Are we responding or are we just twitting our tongues”, the Governor asked.

Expressing confidence that the Committees would do a good job, the Governor declared, “We can from now begin to properly classify our hotels the way that we have the privilege to choose the hotel we want to go to even before we travel out of the country. We expect that the same thing will happen here once all of the hotels are properly graded and put on the websites of the hotels themselves and with the Ministry and all of that; and that can only embolden tourists to now say, ‘oh they now have properly graded hotels, let’s go there’. They are taking the right steps”.

Governor Fashola urged members of the committees “to act in the best interest of the citizens that we serve, in the best interest of the State and to ensure that whatever personal interest that you acquire does not conflict with your official positions; because you will be assessors and judges more or less and that you discharge this responsibility with the fullest candor and integrity which has informed our choice of you”.

Responding on behalf of the two Committees, one of the members, Mr. Dele Momodu, thanked the Governor and the State Government for the opportunity to serve the people saying they were pleased to serve “because if a government is doing very well, it is for us all to give our support to it”.

Also present at the occasion were the Deputy Governor, Adejoke Orelope Adefulire, Secretary to the State Government, Dr. (Mrs.) Oluranti Adebule, Chief of Staff Mr. Lanre Babalola, Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Mr. Ade Ipaiye, Commissioner for Education, Mrs. Olayinka Oladunjoye, Commissioner for Commerce and Industry, Mrs. Sola Oworu, Commissioner for Information and Strategy, Mr. Lateef Ibirogba and Commissioner for Tourism and Inter-Governmental Relations, Mr.Disu Holloway among other members of the State Executive Council as well as other top government functionaries.