Ghana's hotels and guest houses sold fewer than half their rooms early in 2025, GSS survey finds

Pinned summary · as of 04:55

Rooms sat empty across much of Ghana's accommodation sector between November 2024 and February 2025, according to the first results of a Ghana Statistical Service survey of lodging establishments. The service says the data point to weak use of existing space, not a shortage of buildings, as the main problem, though it stresses that only four months have been covered so far.

What we know

• Data gathered from November 2024 through February 2025 for the Statistical Service's Accommodation Unit Survey show a lodging industry with plenty of unused rooms, and occupancy that differs sharply by region and by kind of establishment.
• Lodging supply peaked at roughly 5.21 million room-days in January 2025 and shrank to 4.69 million in February, according to the service's figures. Rooms actually taken in November 2024 were about 2.25 million and reached 2.42 million in December.
• Money earned per room on offer (RevPAR) began at GH₵603 in November 2024 and had slid by roughly a fifth to GH₵490 by January 2025. February brought a small rebound, to GH₵524. The average daily rate paid for an occupied room dropped from GH₵1,351 to GH₵1,112 over the same stretch before improving in February.
• Greater Accra earned the most per available room in every month covered, starting at GH₵1,165 in November, dipping to GH₵852 in January and climbing back to GH₵935 in February.
• The Savannah Region posted the best regional room occupancy, 63.7% in January 2025, whereas the Eastern, Bono East and Volta regions stayed under 28% for the entire four months.
• Hostels reported room occupancy of about 91% to 95%, and standard hostels alone reached roughly 96% to 99%. One-star hotels, by contrast, filled 28% of rooms and 24% of beds in February 2025.
• Hotels supplied about 70% of all rooms and made up roughly 55% to 60% of the rooms that were occupied.
• Hotel guests from abroad usually stayed three to four nights, whereas Ghanaians averaged only two.
• The statistics service argued that the priority for the sector is making better use of the rooms that already exist, not building more of them, and it urged planning and investment decisions to rest on demand and utilisation. It also warned that four months of data amount to a baseline, not a long-term trend.

What's disputed / unconfirmed

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  MyJoyOnline reported that nationwide room occupancy hovered between 44.1% and 46.6% over the four months (44.7% in both November and February), and that Greater Accra's ranged from 41% to 48%; these figures were not carried in the Kumasi Mail's report.
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  MyJoyOnline said monthly arrivals from within Ghana ran between roughly 1.87 and 2.17 million, with fewer than 40,000 foreign guests; the Kumasi Mail did not report these national totals, so they rest on one report.
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  MyJoyOnline reported that beds in the Central Region were more than 70% taken in each month, and that the Western Region peaked at 77.2% in December 2024; the Kumasi Mail did not report these regional bed figures, so they remain unconfirmed by a second report.
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  The Kumasi Mail reported that hotels filled about four in ten rooms, that establishments with 90 to 99 rooms managed 10.2% room occupancy in February, and that premises without licences logged between 430,000 and 577,000 room-days of use each month; no other report repeated these points.

Why it matters for Ghana

Hotel owners, guest-house operators and lenders weighing new accommodation projects in Accra, Kumasi and the regions can see from these figures that a building full of rooms does not guarantee paying guests. The gap between packed hostels, often used by students and domestic travellers, and half-empty hotels in regions such as the Eastern, Volta and Bono East affects jobs and local spending. Tourism planners will also read the survey for hints on where to put roads, marketing and events.