INTERVIEW: African Founders Need to Bootstrap Before Seeking VC Funding – Milly Dubouchet
Over the last three months, we had Milly Dubouchet here at Hotels.ng as part of her Africa Business Fellowship program. I had a sit down with her on her last day at the office two weeks ago and she spoke about her time here in Lagos, the African start up culture and her projections for... Read More
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... Read More
How to Make Startup Tables – Seun Akinboni
The Startup table is getting quite popular lately, as more and more companies are adopting it as part of the set up for their interior furniture. Where it is common in corporate establishments to find staff huddled in cubicles and top tier management holed up behind sprawling tables with an ebony sheen, Startups are redefining... Read More
Photos of Our New Office Space
Boom. Our office is pretty cool, if we do say so ourselves – but you don’t have to take our word for it – even Techpoint thinks so too! Hello, World! The office building itself is distinct enough that we expect it would become a landmark pretty soon, and I have found myself giving driving instructions... Read More
Hotels.ng’s Machine Learning Hackathon: 50% of All No-shows Predicted Accurately!
Hotels.ng held a hackathon on Saturday, the first of August. About 30 people showed up to hack on an interesting problem: can we predict which users are going to cancel a hotel booking? Are there criteria or things that somehow influence the decision to cancel a hotel booking? Hotel booking no-shows are expensive for hotels for the... Read More
Hotels.ng Just Got Funded! – Here’s What We’re Planning Next
We are constantly improving Hotels.ng. This is what we do everyday. It’s our full-time job and our responsibility to our users. Usually these improvements are a series of small changes and updates to our platform or our approach to customer service (social media included). Some of these changes are so small they go unnoticed by all but... Read More
Read: Mark Essien’s Interview on Bella Naija
Recently we had Mark on Bella Naija, a Nigerian blog giving what we thought was an interesting perspective on his life leading up to his founding Hotels.ng. In a feature on BellaNaija’s ‘Making It!’, Mark spoke openly about his career path so far: from a young man studying computer science, then robotics then becoming the CEO of Hotels.ng.... Read More
Hotels.ng Goes In Search of Genius – Twice!
Social media is awesome! You know what else is awesome? Hotels.ng ON social media, if we do say so ourselves. In April, Mark Essien began a social experiment/recruiting exercise that has formed the basis of several online conversations and inspired a number of blog posts. On the 20th of April, Mark took to his Twitter and... Read More
Hotels.ng CEO, Mark Essien featured on Forbes 30 Under 30.
Mfonobong Nsebe, a writer for Forbes.com called Africans to compile a list of Africa’s brightest and aspiring entrepreneurs for the Forbes’ 30 entrepreneurs under 30 list in Africa, which is an official recognition for recognizing young entrepreneurs in the African society. “Nominees must be entrepreneurs who have built businesses that employ at least 4 people. Ideally,... Read More
How Hotels.ng Created Its Famous Call-Centre System
3 months ago, we turned on the Hotels.ng call-center. The decision was quite quick, so we did not have any software for the back-end. All calls were logged on A4 papers and filed in a cabinet. This obviously was not a good method, so I introduced desk.com to log all customer complaints. The call... Read More