Challenges of restaurants in the Bolgatanga Metropolis of the Upper East Region of Ghana

Abstract

The restaurants in Bolgatanga Metropolis and Ghana as a whole, contribute to the national tourism performance in several such as provision of food, alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks and, employment. Despite these contributions, the industry is bedevilled with many challenges that hinder their development. For this, the research seeks to assess the challenges restaurants operation face in the tourism industry in Bolgatanga Metropolis. In achieving this the research made use of purposive sampling method and selected a sample size of fifty (50) where questionnaires are used to gather primary information from the respondents while secondary data was from scholarly articles, reference books, the web and other research works. The data was analysed using frequency tables, charts and percentiles. The analysis as revealed that 50% of the respondents strongly agreed and 40% agreed that access to financial is a challenge. Some of the challenges that were also revealed from the data include; promotion and advertisement, management, support from the tourism industry, high prices of consumables, keeping complete daily inventory records and getting permanent staff workers. the also shows that the tourism industry is supportive in terms of promotion and advertisement as 32% of the respondents scale the support 5 out of 5 and 40% rated 4 out of 5. With these challenges, the study also revealed that about 100% of the respondents agreed that customer satisfaction contribute to the smooth operation of the restaurant and that the business has potentials to develop when the challenges are addressed. The study recommend that restaurants operators as well as culinary food tourism practitioners should be supported financially in-terms of loans, free training etc to assist them to expand their business.