TEVETA Planning and Research Specialist, Felix Nankhuni, says the gaps are a result of failure by accommodation providers to follow indicators in quality service provision on price rate and productivity assessment.

Nankhuni says statistics on the performance of these providers is not appealing to the tourism sector as the quality provided is usually below the required standard.

“What we found out was that 80% of the accommodation providers are not using the 5s and Kaizen Principles, and 70% are not using labor cost ratio and room cost ratio,” he said observing that “if you don’t know how much labor you need to produce, you might be overstaffed. You might achieve profit which is not efficient as you are using too much labor”.

Meanwhile, Deputy Director of Standard and Safety in the Ministry of Tourism, Alice Magombo, says the tourism sector in the country is doing well but there is room for improvement which calls for effective monitoring.

“We are doing great, we have more units receiving license from us, you don’t get license if you don’t comply with the standards,” Magombo said.

TEVETA is implementing Productivity Enhancement Program which focuses on improving the productivity of public and private companies.

Amongst the principles is the 5s Principle of sorting, Straightening, scrubbing, standardization and sustaining which are supposed to be followed at the workplace to complete a task in a more effective way.