We Took a Look At How Nigerians Are Booking Hotels, And Found Some Interesting Things

This year, we are seeing spikes in hotel booking behavior all over the country that are a little divergent from the established patterns from previous years and we decided to peer a little closer at the numbers. Generally, Nigerian hotel bookers are booking their favorite hotels as usual in relatively the same pattern that they have, but some things are a little different now: For starters, bookings in the South - one of the most prolific hotel booking quadrants in the country - dipped slightly, while the bookings in the North has climbed to heartwarming heights (at ~-7% and ~48% respectively). Yankari has been a green trend on our radar lately, with more Nigerians booking hotels within close proximity to the Yankari National Park. It is easy to see why this one happened; the Bauchi government has been promoting tourism to the state lately. And so have we - everybody loves Bauchi. It's an inspiring place, an archetype of Nigeria's natural pulchritude. https://twitter.com/GovMAA/status/730666244614017025   https://twitter.com/hotelsng/status/684785018930069504   Hotel Booking Insights and Our Assumptions At the end of April through the middle of May, we observed an increase in the value of hotels booked in Abuja and an increase of hotel bookings around Abuja. A 10% increase in booking activity can be a significant percentage, especially if the activity is recorded among the high value, luxury hotels, as was the case during that time. We have attributed this to the signing of the 2016 budget in Nigeria at the time. There are two reasons why we are seeing more bookings in Northern Nigeria:

1. We have partnered with a lot of Northern hotels in the past year, and this representation is showing itself on our radar. More people are booking Northern hotels online now that they can find more of them available on Hotels.ng
2. We also think that the positive movement of the Northern booking needle might be related in some way to a generally warm sentiment towards the current administration's anti-terrorism actions in the North.

While the effect of the oil crash is felt uniformly, the impact is easily picked up from activities in Southern Nigeria, especially in the South-South and South-West  as a small number of people are doubling down on the number of hotel rooms they sleep in per annum. Demographic Insights The age group that books the most hotels in Nigeria - by a large margin - is the 25-34 set. 62.4% of the total hotel bookers in 2016 are male. The top five most active states in terms of total number of hotels booked per state are Lagos, FCT, Rivers, Oyo and Delta states. 62% of hotel bookings happen on mobile phones, 32% on desktop browsers and 6% on tablets. We have compiled the sweet stats into an easy infographic:      

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