The Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) and the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) have collaborated with the Lagos State Government to design a uniform hotel grading and classification model functional for the country.
This is contained in a statement signed and issued by Mr Nkereuwem Onung, National President of FTAN, on Monday in Lagos.
Onung said that officials of SON and FTAN met at the office of the Lagos State Commissioner for Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Uzamat Akinbile-Yusuf on Monday.
He said the move was made in furtherance of the collaborative effort of FTAN to sanitise the hospitality industry and ensure international best practices across hotels in the nation.
“FTAN and SON have met with the Lagos State Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture to design a seamless working relationship within the ambit of the law to launch a national hotel grading and classification exercise with Lagos as the pilot,” he said.
Onung noted that the organisations must engage the process of division of labour to actualise the process that would bring uniformity to the hotel industry in terms of national grading and certification.
“We are actually making Lagos State the pilot of this grading and classification project as a pacesetter.
“We know and believe that if the state gets it right, it will be a sustainable lead for other states of the federation,” he said.
Onung explained that it was high time Nigeria joined the global best practice in giving hotels and other tourism allied businesses an international standard so that all other benefits accrued to the status could be enjoyed.
“We are losing many things owing to non uniformity in the national grading of our hotels and this is an impediment to investment opportunities because no one will want to invest in an environment or business that everything goes.
“Also, as it is now, no one will want to visit a place where every state runs its own grading whereby a one star hotel in state A will be two or three star rating in other states and so on.
“Lagos State on their part made it clear that they are ready to collaborate and make the process work, provided the parties involved in the collaborative effort recognise the legal provision of the supreme court in favour of the state,” he said.
Earlier, Mr Felix Nyado, Director, Management System Certification, SON, said that the benefits of designing a national hotel grading standard was ennormous.
Nyado identified some of the benefits as: identifying risk and opportunities; preventing problems from recurring; boosting marketing and sales effort and improving employees performance to improving management control over the business.
He suggested a training session for the directors of the ministry.
He promised to invite the participation of the ministry’s representatives to one of the organisation’s exercise to give them a broad knowledge of what its role entails as the certification organ of Nigeria.
“The implementation of the standard is very important to the stakeholders in Nigeria (hotel owners and all hospitality and tourism promoters) because it is a sign of an upgrade in our hospitality business environment.
“The demand for a unified, one-stop certification and rating system for Nigeria hospitality establishments is a request from the major stakeholders to reduce the weight of compliance on the owners.
“The inspection is going to be carried out by the state ministry of tourism and in line with the requirements of ISO/IEC17020:2012 standard.
“This specifies requirement for competence of bodies performing inspection and for the impartiality and consistency of their inspection activities,” he said.
Nyado emphasised the need to follow best global standard in hotel grading and classification as he presented the ISO Management System Certification.
This comprised of: ISO9001; Quality Management System, ISO 14001 Environment Management System, OHSAS18001 Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series, ISO22000 Food Safety Management System, Integrated Management System as well as the route of certification.
“The provision of certification service is in first, second and third phases among which are the inspection and grading audit, assessment report, recommendation and the final stage is the certification,” he said.
In her remarks, Akinbile-Yusuf appreciated the team for taking time out to visit the ministry over the grading of hotels in the country.
She reiterated that the state had its grading and classification mandate under the ambit of the law, adding that such provision was still valid and would be upheld irrespective of the collaboration.
She agreed to take time out to look at the SON strategic document on the requirements and guidance for use on hotel and serviced accommodation management system.
She promised to revert to the organisations in one month duration for another meeting.