Despite the growth in beds for Uganda hotels from 2,000 beds in 2016 to 3,000 beds in 2017, further development of the hotel industry now faces a hurdle for increasing taxes. “Within the hotel tax, under that, we have also paying licenses; the swimming pool license, the conference license etc. Then we pay the occupational safety Act, then we do have the new taxes, for instance, the Copyright Act was passed. So we pay about 2 million shillings for the right to play music in the hotels but now we are going to pay a further 2 million shillings to play videos in the hotels. Not to mention the other taxes that we pay the normal ones; the PAYEE, the income tax, the rental tax, the concession tax for those in the national parks.” Said, Jean Byamugisha – Executive Director Owners’ Association.

Their situation is compounded by what is affecting other sectors and that is access to and cost of finance. "Most of the hoteliers have borrowed money to build these outfits, the interest rates in the banks are so high. Some of the hoteliers are closing down and selling their buildings." Said, Suzan Muhwezi – Chairperson, Uganda Hotel Owners’ Association. On the sidelines of the discussion, a 20-member discussion of Ugandan hoteliers has been flagged off to Chicago USA for a ten-day benchmarking tour to learn how hoteliers from this part of the world excel.