Making NGN1M In A Single Booking - Adeleke Tomiwa

The hospitality business in Nigeria is growing in leaps and bounds, and still possesses enormous potentials. One million naira in a single transaction for every new organisation is a turning point as it shows that if your business model is repeated then there lies a good chance for growth. In the current business space there exist a slogan saying “START SMALL, GROW FAST” and hotels.ng has been doing just that as Nigeria's biggest online hotel booking agency.We decided not to replicate other hotel booking companys across the globe but to adopt a strategy that is applicable to the Nigerian society. As a company, hotels.ng partners and promotes over seven thosand hotels nationwide and has started spreading it's wings to other African countries. The company has a client base of over 20 thousand clients and not less than 200 thousand people visiting the site every month. Making a million naira in a single booking seems impossible considering that most companies make their money from commissions. In hotels.ng's case, most of the company's partners (hotels) rarely give a good percentage on commissions - most hotels insist on single digit commision . On realizing this challenge, I and two other of my team members, Moses Nmor and Mark Essien approached the problem with this stumbling block in mind. We advertised to over 50 companies both local, international and multinational companies that have branches in at least 10 states in Nigeria; companies we were sure that they travel and spend considerable time in various cities. We achieved our target when a company's board of directors booked 5 rooms (suites) worth N70,000 per night for a whole month which amounted to N10,500,000 and we were able to get 10% of it as commission which amounted to N1,050,000. Since then, replicating this and other business model has produced numerous fantastic results. A wise woman said “ the reward for HARD and SMART work is MORE WORK”, hotels.ng has managed to sieve out a team of people who never rest on their oars, working 24 hours to provide our clients with the best hotel reservation that meet their financial budget, equally providing driving instructions to ensure that our customers never get lost or experience undue stress before, during and after a hotel stay.  

• Adeleke Tomiwa is a Customer Support Officer at Hotels.ng