Hotel: We Offer Unique Services, Hospitality Business

Janefrances Chibuzor

“Lagosians simply want more fun experiences and in fact, the recent stay-at-home period opened up its residents to looking inward for more exciting leisure experiences.”
Christoph Noel – General Manager, Radisson Blu Hotel

Nigeria – In this story, Janefrances Chibuzor focuses on the offers of a 155-guestroom hotel that has become famous for its exclusive services and hospitality business in Nigeria among others.

Now, the tourism sector is setting out business activities and as one of the world’s largest hotel groups, Radisson Blu Hotel renders top-end offerings and hospitality business across the globe.

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The General Manager, Radisson Blu Hotel, Christophe Noel who made this known in Lagos recently said, the hotel has provided high-quality services and insisted that every guest coming to the hotel leaves satisfied.

According to Noel, “We have 155 rooms and they are over 45 square meters, so it is up to the normal standard for a five-star hotel. Amenities in our 155-room hotel include Iyeru Okin, our well-known all-day dining restaurant, Choco-Latte, our in-house coffee lounge, Cut Specialty Steakhouse is our fine dining restaurant, a relaxation spa named Amani, the R Bar for after-work hours and weekend hangouts, a well-equipped spa, fitness gym, outdoor pool area and unbeatable meeting and event facilities.

We have a large array of cuisines starting from African speciality, and continental cuisines, so we cover every nationality around the world.”

In buttressing these claims, he pointed out that Radisson Blu Hotel has one of the best spas in town, thereby noting it would actually be difficult for an intending guest to book as a result of its popularity and quality of services being rendered.

Commenting on the hotel experience during and after the pandemic: He stated, “At first, it was challenging but we immediately faced the issues head-on. The restrictions placed on travel and stay-at-home orders by the authorities led to a sharp decline in our hotel occupancy and revenues. It created a labour crisis as we had to have reduced working hours for staff to stay afloat. It also created difficulty in our sector as majority of our staff are in operational roles, making working from home challenging.”

Continuing: ‘we had to make substantial changes to our operations as regards our business environment to ensure maximum safety for our employees and customers. Whilst the hospitality industry is slowly recovering, the pandemic highlighted to us, the importance of communication with every guest, team member and partner. We have learned to become more flexible in our approach, ensuring that we adapt, respond, and implement measures swiftly as we move forward.’

Noel further revealed the situation was a fortunate one even as a hotel group, they had already gone through a complete diagnostic of the company worldwide in 2017 by putting together a five years plan with concrete initiatives which included taking on significant investments, new brand architecture, new IT systems, new revenue management systems, and a new loyalty program. He, therein added that such development went a long way in helping the organisation to stay focused and sailed through the pandemic period.

He said that they have been doing good in terms of occupancy. “so far, I cannot tell you that we have been badly affected”

According to him, the management team of Radisson Blue Hotel has adopted training and re-training of its staff in ensuring continuous development across areas.

“At our hotel, our people are our biggest asset. We offer continuous learning opportunities for our team through our Radisson Academy with customised training programmes, from induction to leadership, right from day one. Through this training, our teams are equipped with specific programmes to offer personalised services to our guests.’

In addition, “the average Nigerian customer is well travelled and well informed. Nigerians have a high standard for quality and do not settle for any less. To this, he reiterated that the hotel constantly upgrading and elevating its customer service to always deliver quality.

“Many first-time guests from outside the country seem to have conflicting opinions about Nigeria. They always get pleasantly surprised when they arrive in the country and at our hotel. So we always aim to promote the best of Nigeria to both Nigerians and foreigners.”

While describing Lagos as a world-class destination and arguably Africa’s biggest city with a growing economy, he said the residents of Lagos were known to be hardworking, vibrant, happy people as well. “It has beautiful beaches and sightseeing locations for tourists.”

Nonetheless, it has bustling energy like never seen elsewhere. “Lagosians simply want more fun experiences and in fact, the recent stay-at-home period opened up its residents to looking inward for more exciting leisure experiences.”

On the expectation of its clientele: I will say positively well. We are quite a hands-on team. In our hotel, we listen closely to our guests, noting and acting on their feedback. We then constantly measure the quality of service that we deliver to them and quickly respond to any issue raised.”

He equally noted, “our future plans are to remain optimistic and positive as we continue to put our customers first. We will continue to be flexible and make quick decisions as we look ahead to the future of the hospitality industry which will become stronger than ever.

Continuing, “competition is healthy, keeps you on your toes and makes you maintain a high-level standard. So for me, it is really healthy and I have no issues with competition. Our occupancy in our hotel still remains excellent. So we make sure that we do not lose any customer to any competitor.”

“I am surprised at how guests are loyal to the hotel. Our number of repeated guests is massive. Before COVID – 19, I have guests who were coming back after two years since we last saw them. They are coming from the United Kingdom, America, Europe and other destinations.

We have also created a leisure guests segment to encourage guests to take advantage of the top-quality amenities in the hotel. During COVID-19, many airlines were not operating and people could not travel around the world. So people who could not travel were coming in and enjoying the hotel facility.

In addition, “I think every hotel has its unique services/offerings. Competition can also have its merits. In our sector, it has opened us up to more inquiries from customers seeking our unique and personalised services.”

Explaining further, he stated, ‘more business and leisure travellers will seek out increased opportunities in our region and we must keep growing to meet up with future demands.’