De Edge plans expansion in Nigeria’s multi-billion naira hospitality industry

De Edge, a new indigenous premium hotel in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, managed by South African Lac Management Consultants, is planning to expand its hospitality services with two more hotels in Lagos and Abuja.

Nigeria’s hospitality industry has been growing in the recent time with more hotels from local and international investors opening shops, which experts attributed to the growing Nigerian economy.

Investment in the Nigerian hospitality industry is to tap into the overall hotel room revenue that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) projected would expand at a 22.6 percent compound annual rate to $1.1 billion in 2018, from $413 million in 2013.

Speaking on the De Edge’s planned expansion, Christine Plaatjies, general manager of De Edge, tells BusinessDay that the hotel wants to create experience of its services also in more cities.

According to her, the hotel, which opened for business in September 2014, is perfect for the sophisticated business traveller or leisure seeker who wants to rejuvenate, and for government officials who seek a tranquil environment to recoup.

The niche of the hotel is service, which is epitomised in its slogan ‘lavish indulgence guaranteed,’ she says, saying “no matter how big a hotel is, what matters is the service at the end of the day. We are selling service and not rooms or food. We have our loyalty programmes and people love them.”

Christie further says that managing hotel business requires passionate staff who work for passion and not to just work and earn salary, as “in hospitality industry it will be counterproductive to think that staff are slaves. To have best service in the hotels, you need to have good and confident staff that love their job. That is the key to the success of any hotel business and that is what sets us apart.

“You cannot have staff in the hotel and you don’t feed them, and they are serving food to people and are hungry. My staff have 15 minutes for breakfast and 15 minutes for lunch, each day.”

The Nigerian hospitality industry needs hotel schools where hotel operators will pick managers for the day-to-day running of the industry, she says, advising tourism agents to employ the annual dues they collect from hoteliers in developing the tourism sector.