Gabriel Watat a Hotelier and Member of Nigeria Hotel Association, Port Harcourt branch has revealed that Hotels are not breaking even in Rivers State due to very high amount charged for light bills by the Distribution company in the state.
Mr Watat made this disclosure in an Exclusive chat with Revelation Agents Online News, Today in Port Harcourt.
He said “the light is affecting the business in such a way that most of the time we don’t have light and we use a lot of our finance to get other source of light”
He asserted that despite the epileptic light supply, the hotels still pay very high light bills. He said “ I was initially paying 45,000 naira before I knew, it was increased to over 100,000 naira and later to 232,000 naira a month for less than 20 bedroom.
He stated that in 2016 seven Hotels in GRA only, were shut down because of issues of spending much on light bills.
According to Watat, they have met severally with PHED but little or no improvement has been made on the side of PHED, and the hotels resorted to other source of light with high cost of diesel and repair of tear and wear of generator parts.