Hospitality Sector in Accra: Expansion Plans at La Villa Boutique Hotel by Leeford Quarshie

Interview with Leeford Quarshie, General Manager of La Villa Boutique Hotel

What have you been doing recently to expand the hotel?

Every time a customer comes here, from seven years ago to now, there is a new expansion. This shows that the business itself is growing and that we are investing both in the property and in the people. We have begun to expand our upstairs into a lounge. It used to be an open area, so you could only use it in the evening when the sun was down. People that were traveling home but did not want to sit in traffic could come in and wind down before they went out on their way. But, we realized that we were not maximizing the use of the space, so we decided to enclose it and make it more useful throughout the day.

Is the functionality of the space already defined? Will it be a restaurant or a bar?

It is going to be an extension of the restaurant. We are a 40-bedroom hotel, but our restaurant can seat only about 36 people. When we are fully booked and then we have in house guests as well as outsiders coming in for breakfast, it gets a little tight. So, we are expanding the restaurant upstairs so that it can take care of the overflow. It is a very popular restaurant now, so we have outside guests coming in for breakfast, lunch, or to dine in the evening. Having that extension will be good. We are thinking of adding some more rooms in the hotel, possibly 16 more rooms or 12 apartments. If we have this extension already, it is like we have prepared the ground to accommodate the additional rooms to come.

Are you seeing a growing number of business and tourism visitors in the hospitality sector here in Accra as a whole?

We believe in people experiencing our hotel and telling other people about it. When that happens, people have more confidence in a product. It is not what you hear on the radio or see on TV, it is what people can actually testify about you.

Ghana is becoming a middle-income status country, so we expect that the country itself will be growing. There will be a lot of infrastructure projects and the like. If this is true, then people will come into the country. That is the expectation and the hope. You do not wait until they start coming, but you have that projection looking at the general outlook of the economy. We have some challenges now. The amount of arrivals itself has not grown that much, yet new hotels are coming in. It is becoming a little tough for many of the hotels because of this competition. But, if the new hotels continue to come into the country, then they must have some information that some of us do not have yet. That information, which may be real or perceived, is a hope that the country will experience some growth. If it will, then we must all take advantage of it.

You are limited still in terms of the space in which you can grow. Your hotel is based on an old embassy. Many foreigners find themselves very pleasantly welcomed because it feels like home, not like a huge, five-star, multinational structure. It is more of a boutique hotel. But, is there a challenge with being a boutique hotel while trying to grow as well? How do you reconcile that issue?

We are a boutique hotel and we want to remain a boutique hotel. We do not want to be like any of these traditional hotels. However, you need to be a certain size to be able to operate effectively. In the past, we have faced challenges where people wanted to stay with us but they could not because we are too small. Recently, we added a conference room that can seat about 100 people. We can now target conference people and conference events, as well as being able to provide accommodations for them. We have to prepare ourselves. We do not want to be huge. We do not want to go beyond 60 rooms, which is why for the expansion we are looking at only 16 rooms or 12 apartments. If it is 16, it gets us to 56, if it is 12 it leaves us at 52. We do not want to go bigger than that, so we can remain a boutique hotel, remain a home away from home for the people, remain an oasis in the heart of the city; that is the kind of ambiance we want to create. It is not the crowd, but it is the quality of product that we have and the quality of service that we provide to our customers. That is why we have repeat guests.

Do you have any future plans to create more Villa Boutique Hotels?

The owners of this hotel have thought about it and we had initially thought of expanding locally. With two or three more hotels, we could become a local chain. We have also had requests from people within the ECOWAS (Economic Community of West African States) region wanting us to put something like that in their region. Then, it goes beyond the borders. Our immediate plan is to be able to expand locally, adding two more hotels in various locations. We had been looking at Tema, for instance, because that is where the port is. If we can have a hotel there, it would be great. We also looked at Kumasi and Takoradi in the pipeline.

What is your timeframe projection for those plans?

We started this hotel with ten rooms seven years ago. Today, we have 40 rooms, and we plan on adding 12 or 16 additional rooms or apartments within a year or two. If we do that and we say we will not expand again, at that point, we would have to look at adding new locations. Between now and ten years’ time, we should be able to have two or more hotels that we can call the La Villa chain.

I met with the owners and they told me that initially it was a hobby, but they have now become very successful.

It has become their business now.

Do they have a plan to modify the strategy of the business? What is their philosophy of what they would like to do in the future?

The owners are two different people doing different things. One of the partners does construction. He has built many of these big hotels, including some of our competitors. The other partner is involved with private jets and other things. Suddenly, they veered into the hotel industry and they seem to be enjoying it. It is becoming exciting to them. Every now and then, we see them come in and spend some time enjoying the hotel or meeting business people here. Work is only as good as you can enjoy it. Once they can enjoy it, then they are willing to invest more money into it. Certainly, they are doing this for their retirement package.

Your job is to make them happy. The happier they are, the more they invest.

I hope I am able to make them happy all the time. Once they make me happy, I make them happy.

Because this hotel has come from something that is a pleasure and a hobby, guests can feel that.

Definitely. It is not only the story of this hotel. Even for myself, being in this industry was not my primary thought. My father was working with the Foreign Ministry. I thought that I was going to work in the Foreign Ministry as well and become a mouthpiece of the country somewhere else, but it did not happen. I just happened to enter this industry by chance because I spoke more than one language and I thought that it was needed in the industry. I entered and it became enjoyable and I have made it my profession. It is more or less similar to the business itself in that they started it as a hobby and it has become their core business.

You can see this even in your staff as well. The personnel are welcoming and happy. It seems like you are part of a family and guests feel your philosophy in the service. How did you accomplish this with your staff? Is there a training policy?

The most important thing is to make the staff feel like they are part of the business. We run a very open administration. We tell our staff how the business is doing, and if we are doing well, they benefit from it. People who started with us seven years ago have had more than five raises. People have changed positions, having been in one part and learning from another part and they have been able to migrate into such positions. We have seen people who started as pantry boys, cleaning the kitchen, and today, they are sous chefs. They did not go to any culinary school. They learned on the job. We had confidence in them and we were able to move them up the ladder. They started as cleaners, but today they are occupying positions of responsibility. When that happens, people feel that they can grow with the business and that is easily translated to the customer because when the staff is happy, the customer is also happy.

You have many types of guests, from upper class Ghanaians to the international community that has come for the UN and all the large multinationals, who want to feel a bit more at home. Who is your clientele?

If you look at the setting, it looks like a leisure hotel, but it is a business hotel. So, most of the people that stay here are foreigners. About 70% of our guests are foreigners, but any foreigner that comes here most likely has a local agent. It is the local people that are bringing them here. When they bring them here, sometimes they stay here with them and dine and have business meetings with them. However, in the restaurant, there are a lot of middle class and upper class Ghanaians coming in because we have a very a high standard restaurant where quality of meal and service draws these people to come in and spend their time here. The foreigners, the embassies, the multinational companies, consultants, etc., are coming here but it is because they are being invited by or have some connection with the government or private companies that they are partnering with. That is what is making the deal for us. As a hotel, we have not been advertising because we believe in word of mouth. We believe in people experiencing our hotel and telling other people about it. When that happens, people have more confidence in a product. It is not what you hear on the radio or see on TV, it is what people can actually testify about you. That is what has worked for us and people who have stayed with us in the past continue to stay with us.

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