Nigeria is far better than foreigners are made to believe, according to a South African hospitality and image expert, who urged Abuja to jerk up Nigeria’s rebranding project, one of the ways to reverse bad global profile.
Sindiso Sibanda, the General Manager of African Sun Airport Hotel, offered the advice at the commissioning of the hotel in Lagos.
He urged the government to make its rebranding Nigeria project a top priority, saying he was amazed to discover that the country is a much better place than he thought.
He said Nigeria’s image abroad is worse than what he experienced on arrival, insisting that there is compelling need for the authorities to change the bad toga.
Sibanda promised to replicate Victoria Falls hospitality tradition in Lagos, adding that if rebranding is made a priority, it will help improve knowledge of the country and its citizens abroad.
Beating competition
On what the four star hotel has to offer, Sibanda said it has come with century-old hospitality tradition for which Victoria Falls Hotel in Zimbabwe is well known. He promised world class service, as the group does at Holiday Inn and Victoria Falls Hotel, one of the leading hotels in the world.
“We are very strict on standard, that’s what we go for because if you get the standard right, everything else will fall into place. That’s what we go for,” he explained.
According to him, the standard in African Sun Airport Hotel rests on three pillars – people, products and processes.
Sibanda explained that guests come in to meet the staff who know what to do, and are served standard products that meet their expectation, and then the processes put everything in place.
African Sun Airport Hotel was established in Zimbabwe in 1968, and the group also runs the Victoria Falls Hotel which has existed for 100 years.
“We are going to offer world class products and services based on the processes we have been doing over this long period, we have been improving; it’s a continuous improvement,” Sibanda pledged.
African Sun runs 12 hotels in Zimbabwe, of which seven are resorts and five (city hotels) and two lodgings and five casinos.
He said the only way to beat competition is to offer high standards because “if you provide what the guest needs, it is up to him to decide whether you are the best. “We give value for money. Our prices are commensurate with the products and services we offer.
“More than anything else, we have invested a lot of time. We have been training, and training, and training a lot more. We have put in a lot of time, and want to ensure that it pays off.
“We also want to ensure that the products are at the level which we would like it to be. We did two months of training in the country, both classroom training and on the job training before the hotel was commissioned.”
Local content, expansion
African Sun Hotel Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Ifeanyi Onwubiko, said he invested in hotel business to create jobs.
He disclosed that the staff strength of 80 Nigerians and four expatriates was deliberately composed in favour of local content.
He said he located the hotel on Airport Road because there is no big hotel in the area, but stressed that it is not competing with other hotels as it has its unique selling points.
There are plans to upgrade African Sun Hotel to a five star and expand it to Abuja, Port Harcourt, and Ikoyi, Lagos.
Rebranding Nigeria campaign was launched in March 2009 under the late President Umar Yar’Adua by the late Information Minister, Dora Akunyili, who introduced the slogan, “Nigeria: Good People; Great Nation.”
The campaign was reinvigorated under the former Information Minister, Labaran Maku, with a change in slogan to “Ladder of Liberation.”