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At Nigeria Travel Award, NTDC boss tasks stakeholders on domestic tourism

By Chuks Nwanne
10 February 2018   |   3:35 am
The Pearlwort Hotel & Suites, Ikeja, Lagos, recently played host to practitioners and stakeholders in the country’s travel, tourism and hospitality sector, who converged at the venue for the second edition of Nigeria Travel Awards. An initiative of Jumia Travel, Africa’s leading online travel agency, the award project aims at celebrating hoteliers, airlines and travel…

NTDC DG Folorunsho Coker presenting the Travelers’ Choice Award to a representative of Epe Resort at the Nigeria Travel Award in Lagos.

The Pearlwort Hotel & Suites, Ikeja, Lagos, recently played host to practitioners and stakeholders in the country’s travel, tourism and hospitality sector, who converged at the venue for the second edition of Nigeria Travel Awards.

An initiative of Jumia Travel, Africa’s leading online travel agency, the award project aims at celebrating hoteliers, airlines and travel websites for their contributions to the success of the travel, hospitality and tourism industries in 2017, as well as to encourage provision of improved quality services to Nigerians.

To handle the task of accepting nominations and eventually choosing winners in different categories, Jumia had appointed Folorunsho Coker, DG, Nigeria Tourism Development Corporation (NTDC), Michael Balogun, CEO Tour2Nigeria; Babatunde Onibudo, MD Pearlwort Hotel; and Omolara Adagunodo, MD, Jumia Travel as jury members. In choosing winners, the Jury’s decision contributed 50% of the outcome, while the other 50% was generated via public voting.

In her welcome speech at the award ceremony, Omolara Adagunodo, MD, Jumia Travel Nigeria said the objective of the awards event is to recognise the good work that different players within the travel & tourism industry are putting in to ensure customers are satisfied.

“As you know, our mission is to democratize travel in Africa because we believe travel makes better people and stronger business. To achieve this, we want to make travelling safer, easier, and more enjoyable for everyone at every budget,” she said.

In his keynote addressed, the Director-General of the Nigeria Tourism Development Commission (NTDC) Folorunsho Coker called on Nigerians to promote domestic tourism by looking inwards and growing the nation’s tourism policy to enable the sector realizes its full potentials.

He stressed the need to market, promote and bring the world to Nigeria using the numerous tourist attractions in the country.

“To make tourism attractive, certain steps must be taken. We need to review laws that don’t go along with recent trends in the industry; train personnel to understand how the industry works; put infrastructure of tourism in place by investing in tourism assets; produce tourism events to international standard and doing away with bureaucratic bottlenecks that hinder access to finance meant for promoting tourism in the country.”

While submitting the result, Coker, who also spoke on the ongoing effort by his agency to grow domestic tourism in Nigeria, assured that the committee carried out its task diligently in selecting winners in all the categories.

For the Booking Award category, Citiheight Hotel emerged winners, while Travelers’ Choice Award went to Epe Resorts. Best Leisure Hotel in Lagos went to Golden Tulip, Festac, while Best Business Hotel award was presented to Eko Hotel & Suites.

For the Favourite Local Airline category, Air Peace emerged the clear winner, while Emirates clinched the award for Favourite International Airline 2017. Meanwhile, award for Best Travel Blog/Website in Lagos went to Irin Ajo

The inaugural awards held in 2016 ascertained Jumia Travel’s commitment to keep bettering the travel experience in Africa, positioning the awards ceremony as a key event in the travel and tourism sector in each country. This year, they were simultaneously held in 8 other African cities including Nairobi, Algiers, Dakar, Abidjan, Accra, Douala, Dar Es Salaam, and Kampala.

Jumia Travel (travel.jumia.com) is the N°1 Pan African Online Travel Agency, which simplifies the travel booking experience by allowing users to compare prices and amenities in a fast and secure manner. With more than 30,000 hotels in Africa (+300,000 hotels around the world) and more than a hundred flight companies as partners, Jumia Travel aims to democratize travel by reducing travelling cost, providing the largest inventory of properties and granting local & high-quality services to become the one stop travel shop in the continent.

The platform is active in over 40 countries in Africa, with 10 local offices, and more than 400 travel specialists constantly in touch with our customers. Our main hubs are in Lagos (Nigeria), Accra (Ghana), Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Algiers (Algeria), Douala (Cameroon), Kampala (Uganda), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Nairobi (Kenya) and Dubai (UAE). Before June 2016, Jumia Travel was known as Jovago. It was founded in 2013 by Jumia and is backed by MTN, Millicom, Rocket Internet, Orange, Axa, CDC Uk and other financial partners.

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