UGANDA: Uganda Hotel Owners Association New Subscription Fees

For the last 12 years, UHOA has not revised its membership subscription considering the infancy of our sector. However, this has greatly affected the operations of our secretariat in the last few years since our subscription alone has not been sufficient to run our office. UHOA is now one of the key sectors in Uganda's tourism industry and a very vibrant association that participates in many activities. This requires a steady flow of income to remain sustainable.

We have been blessed to get assistance from development partners to carry out some studies on the hotel sector. However, we now need our members to join us in ensuring that UHOA not only has enough income to participate in all tourism activities and organize more robust capacity building programs for our staff but also empower our secretariat by recruiting more staff and regional offices to bring our services closer to our members.

To achieve this, we have had to review our membership fees for the first time in 12 years. Also, after consultations with our partners and parent ministry, we have agreed to open our membership to ALL facilities offering accommodation in Uganda (lodges, campsites, bed and breakfasts, homestays etc). We would like UHOA to be achieve our vision to be "the best provider of hospitable services in the hospitality industry" and also a one stop centre for all accommodation related information.

In the new structure, it has also been agreed that as we wait for UTB to grade all the hotels in Uganda, we shall categorize ALL our hotels into Big, Medium and Small hotels. The Ministry of Tourism is looking to tap into the MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events) market and the grading of the hotels will be very important as we are planning conferences to take place in Uganda.