11 January 2009
opinion
Lagos — It is not the first time he would 'gate-crash' into an alien profession. About 25 years ago, he took the real estate world by storm, establishing a property company that claimed a sizeable chunk of the business. His plan was simple.
With the benefit of hs original training in the law profession, he targetted the underbelly of Nigerian properties and dealt it a blow that compelled attention to the company and the man behind it. Undeterred that he was going into an area that he was not well versed in, Aribisala contrived a scheme to monopolise. He would sell the land, earn the fee for the sale and insist on having his company perfect the paper work. As his fame grew as a property lawyer, he got more jobs as a property consultant. He is so 'heavily involved' in real estate in Nigeria and abroad that many dont even know that he is not a surveyor.
Having made a good job of that venture, it may be right to say that this initial walk into a 'strange' provided the plank and confidence with which he made the current move into the hospitality industry. His property firm is the holding company for his flagship hotel, Protea Kuramo Waters and it was becuase he had the property at Victoria Island that investors from the Protea Hotel group in South Africa found in him a beautiful bride to court and partner with when they came shopper for collaborators in Nigeria.
No matter where his enterpreneurial quest lead him, Aribisala whose hotel is celebrating its third anniversary told Nseobong Okon-Ekong that he will always find good anchorage in the law and would like to be remebered as a lawyer, who exploited other business opportunities and made a huge success of them.
His sojourn into property and hospitality
I am into property, basically, property law. I have done that for so many years and I am known for that. When you hear about me, you think about property. I own a company called 'Aribisala Property Limited'. That was where we started. When you mention my name to those who know me, they will tell you that the man is into property law. It is the company through which we source and sell property to people then we sit on the documentation and monpolise the brief. If I am going to sell a land at Victoria Island for N200 Million, I will do the documentation and I will earn the fee. That was how we started. I have done that for over 24 years. I still have the property company and we use that as a holding company for this hotel. I am heavily involved in real estate both here and abroad.
On his penchant for straying into other enterprise
I will like to be seen as as somebody who has sort of veered into another industry and has been able to make an impact, but basically I stilll want to retain my own area of specialisation, which is, law. What you see here at the hotel is a hobby. I just want to look at it from a point of view from which I am making an impression, that is, talking about quality service and quality infrastructure. These are the areas we are looking at the industry and trying to champion. When we came in about three years ago, the concept of hotel changed. When you come in to this hotel, you begin to ask yourself, I'm in Lagos or Cape Town or New York, we try to improve on that we still have vast land stretching into the Kuramo Waters, so we are now moving up to really now try and catch the Five-Star itself. I think we want to build a hotel thatis really breath-taking. You will wonder by the time we finish it. In the past five years a lot has happened to the industry that is looking at the other existing hotels, one will begin to ask what has changed the concept of hospitality in the past years. It is simple, hotles before now where handled at unprofessional level. All they did was build rooms, let it out and collect money. But that is not the concept of hotels in the international arena. The concept of hotel is an experience of its own. It is now like flying an airline, which is not what it used to be like 25 years ago, same thing has happened to hotels. It is now being branded. There are world class hotel groups who now start from desing level and they get involved. By the time the whole project is finished and you get into a room you can feel the difference. You fell like you are in paradise you dont want to leave the hotel room. If you stayed for three nights by the time you are packing on the third night, you have that sense of lose. It is not like you come here, you call for a bottle of beverage and then you find yourself calling for another one, not because you cannot sit in your house or got to a beer parlour and drink it, but because of the environment, you dont want to leave the environment. How much of these experience is being shared in this part of the world? If you take a stistics of hotels in Lagos and Abuja, how many of them would you say give a worthy experience? It is not just building houses on a plot of land and you call it an hotle.
Kuramo Waters is built on two acres, you can't believe it we have 60 rooms and that is unprescedented. Look at the space. It is a boutique hotel and purpose built from the beginning just to create sheer pleasure. Why do you have to build 60 rooms on two acres? It is crazy, don't you think so? We could as well build 450 rooms, but that was the whole concept we have the breeze of the Atlantic Ocean coming in directly. By the time it is getting dark, between 7pm and 8pm, you may need to get some warm clothing. If we had clustered the whole place with rooms, it would have looked like any other hotel we are used to in Nigeria. This new trend is what we are trying to celebrate and the facility that is up to date and it is world class.
By naming some of the segments of the hotel after some of the popular resorts that you know in the wlrd like the Bahamas, St. Lucia and Antiqua, we are simply bringing back memories of the known get-awat destinations. The whole concept is to show that hotel is not just to sleep and wake up. It should go beyond that. You should want to come back again. It must be above what you are used to ordinarilly.
The segments of the hotel are pretty much the same. There are seven categories of rooms.
Usually you dont travel because you are going for business only. Nobody makes a clear distinctinction between travelling for pleasure or travelling for business. You can achieve the same on the same journey. There is no way you will spend the whole time doing business. You want to get back to the hotel in the evening and relax and may be set the last two days for sight-seeing and shopping. We think you can have both experience.
Why he decided to partner with Protea to develop a hotel
The experience to build a hotel has been with me becuase I love good things and when you love good things you show appreciation and the next thing is to see whether you can replicate these things back home. Looking at the situation before there is no way you could have come across this kind of idea. I f you have it in you and the opportunity comes to you for the first time you will grab it. It's been there, but when Protea came and I bought this long before Protea came to Nigeria and was looking for a partner to develop a world class hotel that is wnat happened. We started talking and they said come to South Africa and I went to Cape Town and I saw what they had. I said wow, I had been thinking about this, let's do it. They came lookig for us and that is what made the difference. It would have been a little difficult for anyone to achieve this.
Protea is involved in small and medium sized hotels. They dont do giant hotels. The highest I have seen them do is 300 rooms. They go as low as 30 rooms and as big as 350 rooms. You can fall in between. They want to take the experience to every nook and cranny. In Lagos, there are five Proteas- three in Victoria Island and two in Ikeja. To me, it makes sense to have five hotels offering the same serivce scattered everywhere than to have one ginat hotel. It means you are taking the service everywnere. I think we have 14 Protea hotels all over Nigeria
Each one of these hotels has its own character and its own style. Each one is built to serve a particular market. Rather than having disagreement, we use the multiple ownership as a strenght. For example, becuase we are always fully booked, all we need to do is to call the nearest Protea. They have been of tremendous assistance. Whatever price we discussed with that guest, we can make sure he gets it over there. It is a family. If I am going to South Africa as a Protea owner, you can be sure I wont pay a dime and if another Protea owner from South Africa is cominghere or anybody at the topmanagement level we dont pay we interchange a lot. You see yourself as part of a chain, you dont see yourself surviving alone. The relationship is too good to be true.
His assessment of the Nigerian hotel industry
Possibility of a Nigerian hotel chain that can be exported. It is possible, but as you can see, you have to deal with the issue of energy first. You have to deal with the issue of infrastructure at home and you have to dela with the issue of traiing and facility for training and the attitude of our people to work.
You dont talk of buillding an empire without having the wherewithal. Until lately we run on generator 100 percent. We spend an average of N8 million per month on diesel in a 60-room hotel. Is that not madness? Multiply that by 12 months, you have N36 million per annum on diesle alone. That could have been saved. Multiply that with other facilities. The same applies in other industries it is not hospitality alone. Think about the Trillions of Naira involved that we have to expend on energy.
On the average if we have imporved public power supply, the diesel consumption will drop to about N3 million per month. If we pay PHCN N1 million per month, I will be a happier person. You have the smae scenario in all other areas including roads and water supply. Look at manpower, the products from our univerisities are not good enough. If you want to run a hotel chain, where do you get the manpower. There are no hotel trainig schools in Nigeria. To start a new Protea, they send the General Manager from Sout Africa. It is applicable with all other international hotel chains in Nigeria.
We have an understanding in our MoU for transfer of knwledge to Nigerians, but are our people ready to learn? When you employ the average Nigerian, he is thinking about what to steal. Do you know that in this hotel, they steal as little as bottled water? They steal orange juice. They stela spoon. So you have to search your staff as they leave the premises. I cant have a Nigerian manager in my hotel. The hotel will run down.
By the time there are leakages here and there, the whole thing will run down. There are hotels in Lagos that are completely run aground and they are being sold because the owner is discouraged.
That is what you call a brand because they make sure that is works. The problem we have is taming Nigerians and trying to make them conform to what is happening in the other world.
If you are talking of world calss rooms, we are not there yet in Nigeria. We are scrtaching to meet what should be there. The few ones that are just getting there are over priced becuase of running cost. A standard hotel as it is known in the real world. There are many things that are taken for granted. You dont cook yam for breakfast. You can have a Nigerian segment, after providing full continental breakfast. In fact, you now have English breakfast and American breakfast. But you dont force a whiteman to eat yam in the name of Nigerianising the menu.
Why Nigerian cuisine is not reckoned with on the international arena
Nigerian food is not recognised on the international menu. The Nigerians we cater for is less than five percent. Nigeria or African cuisine is full of carbohydrate, nobody wants to eat it, even me as a Nigerian, I dont want to eat Nigerian cuisine. You can see what it has turned me into, before I realised. Carbohydrate stores fat in your body. That is why we are all stocky. When you are hungry you cant eat good food, you say man dey suffer, as soon as money comes you start eating carbohydrate and you blow up.
Our food food cant popularised because it is not food that make you keep fit. When you eat too much Nigeria food, you will see the damage it will do to your system. I eat once a day becuase I am hooked to Nigeria food and to be able to manage my diet to the barest minimum so that this food will not kill me, I reduce my food to lunch-yam plus garden egg (no pounded yam at all-nothing to swallow for me). I have stopped eating such foods for over one year now. I have to do my mornig exercise of of at least 35 minutes to help me to burn the one I eat once a day, if not by now, I wont be able to breath because I was too big at a point in time. When you eat Nigeria good food there will be panla, plenty meat, if you do that reguyalrly, you are in trouble. Try it you will see what it will do to your body.
Whether in Germany, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, Australia, Malawi or Kenya, you get the same thing. We have import many of the things we use. Do you believe that we import even things like butter, including the jam and the tomato. You cant go and bring the one they produce locally. The one they put inside table water bottle. It is not hygienic. the same food you are eating in Australia or Hong Kong, when you call it continental- the same food move arround. Why dont you have McDonalds or Kentucky Fried Chicken in Nigeria? Are they no t in all developed countries? How many fruits do we put on the table for dinner as sweets? When you go to the other world you have as many as 20 fruits, but here they just put apple and a few others. The apple is imported. If you cant take the trouble to buy a carton of apple at N9,500 at Apogbon, then it menas there will be no apple and if there is no apple, they will wonder what kind of hotel you are running.
The spoon used here has to of a certain level. Even the cable television must be a minimum of between 15 and 17 channles. We have 17 channels here. Some other hotels that call themselves five-star have just three channels. we have very few quality hotels in Nigeria, we are just managing. I dont know how we will get there when nearly everyting is banned in Nigeria and yet you are talking about quality hotels. All the furniture you see in hotels South Africa come from Europe and the Far East. If anybody tells you they can produce the kind of furniture used in standard hotels, they are just sounding off. This chair we are sitting on was produced in South Africa. The company was established by a Dutch who has a parent company in Hollnad. They have a parent company in Holland. They have a big factory in Cape Town. What it means is that if you go to any Protea in Malawi or Kenya you will see the same furnityre. You can't improvise. This umbrella was produced in South Africa, this week we will phase out these ones. They have a life span. In Nigeria, once you bring it in, that is the end, nobody will change it again. Thes flags of countries we brought them from South Africa. There is not a single company that produces flags. I f you check the directory, you will find companies producing flags of any country.
Why he is celebrating Protea Kuramo Waters at Three
We are celebrating three years. In a short time, for two-and-a-half years, we have operated 100 percent every day. It is an achievement- that there is no single room not occupied for 365 days a year. The service is incredible 70 percent is being used by Exxon-Mobil another 10 percent by tow other companies.
I dont even have a room in my own hotel until the guests go on holidays.
We fete them like these for two or three times a year, we have a party for them just them happy. The least room in what we have now is USD280 and the highest is USD750 excluding tax.
Where the hotel is going in the next phase
We are doing the second phase of the hotel. We are going up to 10 floors and we will be having a world class facility this time around. We plan to have 140 rooms in the new development.
We are sandfilling the water. It is an L-Shape desing which is being done in South Africa right now. It is breathtaking. It will still be within this two-acres. We are going to the sky. There will be a conference centre. We will also have a Mexican Restaurant at the roof top. It will be ready by the middle of next year.
That is what we want to add to actually consolidate what we done and to be able to tell you now we are just now going to build a real high class hotel, becuase what we have now is a pilot. You will see the real Kuramo Waters.
What he has learnt in the past three years at Protea Kuramo Waters
The challenge here is that we are giving service and it is contemporary service we are giving. A serivce that requires you to be up and doing and a serive that is well organised, a service that you need support of a hotel group to survive. You cant run this kind of hotel on your own in this country. You cant survive if you know what it costs to run a hotel, it is science. it is technical. It is not just going into your bedroom to sleep, you are building an accommodation for the international person somebody who doesnt care who you are and where you are, but thinks you should be able to meet his needs. When you have an international guest or visitor, irrespective of where he is from-Norway or anywhere once he enters that room, he must feel relaxed. The room must be acceptable to him. That is the test of what we are talking about.
I dont think there is any special law regulating hospitality beyond the approval for building the hotel-where we are, for instance, is called hotel and tourism development zone by the Lagos state government. Once you are give an approval to build a hotel, I dont think you will be violating any law but then the issue of what goes on in the hotel is there. Of course, the local governments have their relevant laws about sanitation, even that same law, I can tell you what is operated in a good hotel is international law as it relates to the hospitality industry and these laws are lready taken care of by the hotel group. It is in-built structure on what the hygiene that you can run the facility you dont need to bother yourself about it. There is a level of personnel you should engage in the kitchen to that extent you are subject to tax, VAT, you are to observe any law law that affects the hospitality of course for your safety you have to take insurance to cover in case any of them sustains injury while on the premises
Government involment in hospitality industry is all noise. If they cant do anything, at least they should copy what is happening in the developed world. Government doesnt have the will, governemtn cant do anything in this country, forget about it. I think they should give a charter to a body, like they did for the Institute of Estate Surveyors and the Nigerian Bar Association, so that investors in the hospitality industry can control their affairs and set their own standards. We can organise ourselves. They should not put us under the Minsitry of Tourism. Any body in the hospitality sector now exists on paper. The real investors like Chief Sonny Odogwu, Oba Otudeko and myself are not involved. we cant go there becuase they are not well organised. Until there is no more government intervention at any level, we cant be involved. Government should allow us to control ourselves. We will get to that point soon, because a lot of individuals are investing a lot of money into the hospitality industry.
Why there is increased investment in the Nigerian hospitality industry
The climate is good becuase of democracy. Protea is the first hotel chain to come to Nigeria. Now that others see them doing well, others are coming. I believe there coming is good for the system. A lot of powerful hotel chains are coming. It will elevate the industry. The user will have better service. The guest will get value at reduced price.
Time will come when banks will start putting money in hotels. Government will have to allow those who put money there to organise the place. Is it government that helped them to organise the Nigeria Stock Exchange? By the time you are having hotels of between 300 and 500 rooms of high class, the people will come together and they will organise themselves, but now we operate without any form of control from the government.
Right now the hotel user is paying more now because infrastructure is not there. To provide infrastructure costs so much money. For example, this hotel we have to in our own water. There is no water from the public mains. We have to handle our waste. We pay LAWMA to clear the refuse thrice a week. We do our drycleaning ourselves. There is nothing from government. If you go to Cape Town, you dont dryclean by yourself there are well established companies that come in the morning to pick your laundry and return them it back same day. It is the same in the UK, but here we have to establsih our own laundry with about five machines. We iron, we starch, we do everyting. By the time we do everything by ourselves, somebody has to pay for them. That is why our roooms are so expensive. As soon as we begin to improve on infrastructure the price of rooms will come down and competition will become stiffer. I am talking to you from the background of a business I have done for three years. I cant be an expert in everything.
I will like to be seen as somebody who veered into another industry and has been.
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Sir,
Few days back, I was contacted by an Indian HR consultant for a Job in author's firm, AOS Practice, which instigated my interest in the author and his firm. Since, there are so many “419 scams” originating from Nigeria and photographs do not reveal a man’s personality, therefore, I conducted extensive Net research on him , his firm, and his vision. I learned about him , right from his entry in Nigerian Bar in 1984, LL.M in Criminology, 12 criminal cases which he argued at the Supreme Court of Nigeria, loss of deposit in London Property up to earning of his silk among 15 SAN chosen from the 149 distinguished lawyers, last year. I was also impressed by his “false identification as a Property Man and Pride of Africa”. The last push came ,when I learned about him after reading his above interview given to Nseobong Okon-Ekong on Jan. 11, 2009, widely published on net ,which motivated me to write . His interview confirmed to me that he is a simple, straight forward honest man, who has risen from ranks to the cadre of elite. he does do not hesitate to admit the weaknesses and know the ways to over come them. his honest comments about the Nigerian food, working of Government, conditions of physical and institutional infrastructure, and character of Nigerians were an eye opener. I was really moved by his example of “steeling spoons”. However, I believe that if the deficiencies of system which he has identified are improved, the Character of an average Nigerian will automatically change. After all, poverty and poor living conditions compel a man to steal. his views about level and quality of food and service, problems associated therewith and “Hotel Management” were really fascinating, especially more when they were coming from a lawyer who was not an hotelier. Before I close, and being a lawyer myself, I have a humble request to make to him . As he has said that he” always find good anchorage in the law and would like to be remembered as a lawyer I suggest it is about time he should enter in to the National Politics. History shall confirm that many lawyers have changed destiny of their nations, be it Mr. M.K. Gandhi, Mr. Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, current US President Mr. Obama, or our current Indian Central Governments Foreign Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram. All had one thing in common. They had resources, vision and a desire to serve. After reading his interview, I am convinced that he also has all the three factors at his disposal. I thank Mr.Nseobong Okon-Ekong for sparing his valuable time in recording his interview and I hope to see him one day as the front leaders and Archiect of Democratic Nigeria.