By Yunus S Saliu
As the tenure of the chairman of the Gambia Hotel Association under the leadership of Mr. Francis Njie ended, members of the association on Wednesday, 27th March 2024 elected Ma’am Hayat Blell, the General Manager of Sunset Beach Hotel who is also the Honorary Consul of Malaysia to the Republic of The Gambia, as the new Chairperson of the Gambia Hotel Association (GHA).
Having a brief interview with her shortly after her acceptance speech, Ma’am Blell who was the deputy chairperson of the association in the past accepted the responsibility and called for the support of the general members in taking the association to a better and higher level.
She highlighted the significance of the association and hotels to the industry while dilating on the significance of the association in providing international standards of good service delivery especially now that The Gambia is about a month away from hosting the 15th edition of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Summit in Banjul.
The new Chairperson who has been in the tourism industry for over two decades and is also among the accommodation committee members for the upcoming 15th edition of the OIC Summit said the members of GHA are quite prepared for accommodating guests during the Summit and beyond.
As part of the accommodation committee member, she said the committee has assigned a team to visit nearly all hotels, apartments, or private villas by checking them to make sure that they all measure up to standards to allocate them to different clientele coming for the meeting.
The GHA chairperson has assured of continuous visibility of the members in terms of making the association best in terms of working with the Gambia Tourism Board, and Tour Operators among other stakeholders.
Notwithstanding, she said a lot of marketing still lying with the GTBoard for the hotel industry to do better because GHA members are well experienced and they are over forty “with lots of ideas and different specialties so we plan to work very closely with GTBoard to give our ideas in term of how we feel Destination Gambia image can attract more tourists.”
However, the new Minister of Tourism and Culture, Honorable Abdoulie Jobe, coincidentally visited the members of the Gambia Hotel Association as “our AGM was in progress and we were very impressed and we are quite eager to work together with the Ministry and see what we can do to kind of push the Gambia on the forefront of tourism.”
Meanwhile, Chairperson Blell highlighted some priorities for the association, which included bringing the association closer, having more ties with stakeholders, and ministries, and training among others