In a surprising development, Ghana’s accommodation sector may not have a shortage of rooms after all.
However, the bigger problem appears to be the price people have to pay to sleep in them. This is the key insight emerging from the latest accommodation data released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), covering the period from November 2024 to February 2025.
According to the data, Ghana had an average of about 168,000 accommodation rooms available each night across hotels, guest houses, hostels and unlicensed lodging facilities. Yet, more than half, roughly 55% of those rooms remain empty on the average night.
Amid this situation, policy and data analyst Alfred Appiah says the figures point to a structural problem that should force both policymakers and industry players to rethink how they view Ghana’s accommodation market.
For him, the issue is not simply about building more rooms. It is about making available accommodation affordable enough for the people who need it.
The Empty-Room Problem
According to the GSS, at the national level, accommodation establishments recorded an average occupancy rate of about 45%. In simple terms, for every 100 rooms available, only about 45 were occupied on an average night.
This leaves more than half of the country’s accommodation capacity unused. The analyst argues that if more than half of the available rooms are empty, the immediate policy question should not be how to build more hotel rooms.
He believes it should be why existing rooms are not being used. He notes that the answer becomes clearer when the figures are broken down by type of accommodation.
The cheapest beds are the ones filling up. Hostels stand out sharply from the rest of the market. The data shows that standard hostels recorded an occupancy rate of about 98%, meaning almost every available room was being used.
The picture changes dramatically higher up the accommodation ladder. Three- to five-star hotels recorded occupancy of about 43%, while guest houses and one-star hotels recorded occupancy of only around one-third.
The segment closest to the affordable end of the market is almost completely occupied, while a large proportion of rooms in other accommodation categories remain vacant. For Appiah, this suggests that Ghana’s accommodation market is dealing with an affordability gap rather than simply a capacity gap.
The Regional Breakdown
The regional data reinforces the argument about affordability. Only Central, Savannah, Ashanti and Western regions recorded occupancy rates above the national average.
Greater Accra, despite being Ghana’s largest accommodation market and a major destination for business, tourism and events, recorded occupancy of about 43%. In Eastern, Bono East and Volta, approximately three out of every four rooms remained unsold.
These numbers raise an important question for investors: Does Ghana really need thousands of additional accommodation rooms when so many existing rooms are already struggling to attract customers?
Alfred Appiah believes that the interpretation suggests that policymakers should be careful about treating low accommodation availability as automatically meaning a shortage of physical rooms.
The market may instead be signalling a shortage of affordable accommodation that ordinary travellers, workers, students and visitors can actually afford.
The Bottomline
The GSS figures therefore provide a useful warning for the accommodation industry. Adding more expensive hotel rooms to a market where existing rooms are already underused could deepen the mismatch between supply and demand.
The data suggests that the opportunity may lie elsewhere. Investors could increasingly look at budget hotels, affordable hostels, serviced rooms and other lower-cost accommodation models that can serve a wider section of the population.
For policymakers, the data could also inform decisions on taxation, land costs, planning regulations, financing and other factors that influence the final price of accommodation.
The objective should not simply be to increase the number of rooms Ghana can offer. It should be to increase the number of rooms that people can comfortably afford to use.
