Warning! You will get SERVED at the Akosombo Continental Hotel

My friends and I just returned from a weekend away in Akosombo. Call it a couple's retreat if you will. The plan was simple fun and sun with good friends for a couple of days. After all, it's not only "obronis" who should have all the fun.


Planning went a little messy, for various reasons, and this naturally affected our collective movements; but in the end, two couples set off on Friday, and the rest joined on Saturday morning. My wife and I were the first of the two couples to arrive, somewhere around 7pm on Friday evening. There's where the trouble started. Our weekend away was fun - a really enjoyable time with our friends and families. 


But the service we encountered, especially at the premium prices they were requesting, was unacceptable, and boy, did we raise hell. 

• The FRONT OFFICE - Reservation was a bit of a problem on both sides. Our planning, which, like I've said, went a bit messy, meant that we had to reorganise our reservations. However, the hotel's complete disregard for the original reservation we had, and their willingness to offer us a worse alternative, just because others have booked the rooms we requested should have sent us warning bells. For the rest of our [collective] stay, the ladies there seemed to be only ready to take instructions, rather than initiative, and will hardly go out of their way to do anything which they haven't cleared with the manager, which was the next problem... 
• The MANAGER - I try not to judge on appearances, so even though my wife immediately thought the fellow did NOT look competent, I gave him the benefit of the doubt. Until I realised very worryingly that the manager was micro-managing, and it was obvious he was doing a poor job of it. When the same person is overseeing the reception area, the restaurant, the rooms and other services/facilities such as airconditions, swimming pool and even the boat rides, there's only so much he/she can do. If he/she has gone to the extent of trying to work with cheap labour and save costs by being mean with resources, you know that the operation is doomed to fail. I felt no pity for him. In fact, from the moment things started going downhill, I summoned him and promised that I was not going to pay that $95 [yep, you're reading that right!] after getting such rubbish service. I let him know I was expecting to be compensated ( with a discount) and I expected him to improve things. He whinged on the former, claiming that he could only offer a maximum 10% off the price of the rooms. He didn't seem bothered about the latter. He has regretted.
• The ROOMS - were below average. Way less worth than $95 (considering I've slept in much better rooms for as low as $40). The beds were uncomfortable, and the pillows? Goodness, can you call it a pillow if it's no bigger than a folded blanket? There was a fridge (the only thing in the room that properly worked) and a tiny 14-inch TV from the 1980s which had only three channels (two on DSTV which were randomly changed without warning), and no remote control. The rooms are poorly designed; there's no point in seeking natural ventilation - you may as well go and sleep naked in the corridor. The airconditioners have this confusing operation which mean that if you try and adjust the temperature significantly, the room will be either too cold or too warm. Our friends in room 210 could not sleep one night, because they had to keep waking up every 15 minutes to turn the aircondition back on! The bathroom was very poorly thought through. If you take a shower, you risk wetting everything else in there, including your toilet and toilet paper. Fat chance having that toilet paper replaced. 
• VARIOUS SERVICES - This includes maintenance, housekeeping, laundry, etc. Honestly, the housekeeping would have received top marks, if not for the fact that they start cleaning as early as 7 in the morning! What the heck???? The hotel is not that big to be waking people up by sweeping the corridors outside their rooms that early. Also, they (along with their crap manager) need to be ashamed of themselves for not changing/refilling basic things such as towels, soap and toilet paper. For the other services, I guess I will need to recount the bad experiences... My wife ended up standing naked in the bathroom for about 15 minutes simply because the water was not running. Apparently, someone had the bright idea to provide hot water only between 5 and 7am and for another 2 hours in the evening. The manager claimed this was the old management's policy, but it has been discontinued. He was either out of touch with the reality or he was lying. I had to call the reception to have the water sorted. Neither hot nor cold was flowing while she waited. At the same time I requested an iron for our room. I followed up on the iron a couple of times while she was still in the bathroom, and then she continued to check while I went in. Eventually, someone came from the reception to collect our clothes, claiming that the delay was because the laundry was NOT YET OPEN. This was after 8am on a Saturday when the hotel was reportedly fully occupied. Some time after 9am and several calls to follow up on our clothes, we found something else to wear and went down for breakfast. The aircondition fellow was either unable or unwilling to help, and only visited selected rooms after several calls. The woman in charge of the pool refused to provide a towel, claiming that guests would have to use their room towels, when there's a sign that clearly says guests should NOT take towels out of the rooms. She claimed that was the previous management's policy, but guests were violating that by running off with their towels. AS IF????
• The RESTAURANT - Food was reviewed favourably, but most of the waiting staff were hopeless. During dinner on the first night, the waitress who served as was ignorant, incompetent, and [in my opinion] illiterate. Her reply to most questions was "I don't know" accompanied by a foolish laugh. She didn't know what most of the dishes on the menu were, and if pressed, will say the main ingredient was not available. She got no tip, and I made sure to call for a different waiter the next night. He was slightly smarter, as he was able to lie boldly to our faces about things, but he was just as incompetent. In the end, we called for the chef himself so that we could verify the menu and make our choices. Saturday's breakfast was a buffet [surprise, surprise!]  ostensibly because the hotel was fully booked. There was a moderate spread of bread, eggs, sausage, sugar, milk, butter, jam, hot water, teabags and Milo sachets. We needed to confront them about everything on the menu before they brought them out. The juice, oats, cereal, fruit and anything else you can think of were hidden away because the cooks and supervisors were regulating the quantities of what was on offer. Sunday's buffet was set up the night before, then taken apart just before guests actually started arriving in the restaurant. The manager thought it will be more effective to serve everyone a standard plate of bread, eggs and sausage, whether they wanted to eat these or not! We had another confrontation. Eventually we had them set up a mini-buffet on our table, so that we could actually choose what we wanted. This was just before we were insulted by one of the waitresses who thinks the customer is not always right. 

So after a host of threats and complaints directly to the manager, and enduring his false claims of trying everything within his means to make us happy, we were ready to check out. As of late morning Saturday, when the complaints had pushed us to the point where we were considering checking out to find a better alternative, we agreed with the fellow that we were paying only $80 for the one night some of us had stayed so far. Upon checkout on Sunday morning, we were presented with a whopping bill that added up [after conversion] to GHC930!!!! We weren't having it. 

As you can imagine, they got a lot less than GHC930. We are also taking it up with ownership/management of the hotel (who happen to be in Accra), as well as the Ghana Tourist Board. Our preliminary investigations [pun intended] have revealed that:

• The facility is currently operating WITHOUT a VAT certificate, although they are charging accordingly.
• The facility has had its electricity supply terminated recently, for non-payment of bills, but have put in place some sort of illegal connection 
• The facility has been colluding with the Eastern Region branch of the Tourist Board, which is why they still haven't been shut down, despite the fact that people are aware of their poor service.  

But just in case you are planning something in the near future, DO NOT go to Akosombo Continental Hotel.