In its readiness to give hospitality buyers within and outside Nigeria the international touch of domestic services in order to ease the hurdle of travelling to book for hotels, Nitestay, a new entrant into the online hotel business, offers one-click-booking for customers' convenience. Launched on October 1, 2011, Nitestay has sealed deals with many hotels in Nigeria to cater for the hotel needs of travellers within and outside Nigeria.Nitestay is affiliated to Hotels.com in the United States, which accords its customers the opportunity to book over 40,000 hotels around the world in addition to Nigeria hotel partners.Nitestay expects anadditional300 hotels to list its partners by mid-year and over 1,000 hotels across Nigeria on its website by end of year. It currently has a travel guide on its website (www.nitestay.com) to guide customers on the choice of hotels and booking processes. Speaking with Tribune Tourism Magazine in Ibadan, recently, the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Nitestay, Mr Femi Okanla, a graduate of Economics from Georgia Southern University in the United States of America, said Nitestay is out to redefine the online booking system in Nigeria to meet global trend.Okanla explained that the rationale behind the Nitestay to promote tourism in Nigeria, to reduce the stress/bottleneck of travelling around Nigeria, to support the CBN cashless program.Giving a highlight of his expertise and readiness to uplift the service trend in Nigerian hospitality industry, Okanla explained that his period of engagement with the then Governor of Georgia State (Sonny Perdue) as an intern, gave him an insight into governance, budgeting and planning.According to Okanla, 'At the completion of my internship I returned back to work as a credit analyst with one of the leading banks in Nigeria. I worked for a couple of years in the banking industry before proceeding to the UK to pursue a Masters Programme in International Business Management.'I came about this idea during myprogrammein the UK where I spent a lot of time studying the process of online selection, booking and payment for hotels. I later developed a strong conviction that I could create an exact match of this system in Nigeria. Okanla said that at the inception, he and other co-founders (Pelumi and Kingsley) created an online hotel portal withadditionalflexibility to meet the demands of an emerging market. Experts with hands-on experience in the Nigerian hospitality industry are handling our business development unit.'At this time, we recruited the services of an IT expert who previously worked with Accenture UK, a finance analyst with experience in the Nigerian financial services industry and a project management consultant to complete the operations team.Nitestay.com is coming at a time when our society is beginning to have more transactions that are cashless and our secured online payment portalencourages the system of making payment for hotel rooms using e- payment. The introduction of various electronic channels has also made transactions easy and planning possible. Rather than experiencing unnecessary delays in hotel selection and booking when planning a trip, with a few clicks online, the whole process is easier in a matter of minutes.On the issue of last minute, late bookings or sold out periods, Okanla assured that their customers had nothing to worry about, according to him, 'At Nitestay, our partners are vast and this allows us to cater for late bookings and find rooms during sold out periods for our customers. In addition, we operate a functional call centre, which is open seven days a week with standby customer representatives always available to assist. 'We have a directions map for our hotel partners, which allows guests to have a clear description of where the hotel is. We also have an option of receiving receipt as text message, which enables guests to check into a hotel with ease. 'We offer value added customers service to constantly keep our patronage by giving them special discounts. Currently we have a 10 per cent rebate on all bookings from now till end of month(April), we plan to have as much has 50 per cen off hotel rates at the end of year festivity period.'Okanla added.
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