How HotelMoney is Making Online Booking Easier, Safer in Nigeria
By Vanessa Obioha
Established in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, the online booking and payment platform HotelMoney has made things easier for hospitality businesses. It was in 2002 that its founder Nweke Okechukwu stumbled on the opportunity to fill the vacuum of online payments and bookings in the sector.
“When I got into the hospitality space around 2002, the banks in Nigeria were trying to get their online payments acts together. My boss, at the time, told me to ensure that I rebuild the hotel’s website so that people could make payments easily. That was when I saw a massive vacuum in both the payment space and the online booking space. That was when I decided to build my company to fill this gap,” he said.
By 2020, he and his team were able to secure a partnership with Google and built HotelMoney for partner hotels to receive bookings seamlessly.
For Okechukwu, booking online is easier, simpler and a whole lot more convenient for the end user.
“Imagine you want to stay in a hotel in a country you have never visited before. If you have to do physical bookings, you may need to find someone in that country, beg or pay him to go to the hotel and book, and then worry about how to pay. But over the internet, you pick the room, see the pictures, book and pay. If there are changes or problems, the hotel will give you feedback before you even leave your home country. That’s what HotelMoney is all about.”
He added that “Online is the easiest way to reach a large audience. It’s probably the best way to scale any business globally. There is an explosive opportunity in building a business online.”
Okechukwu believes that there is hope for an increase in penetration in his business. But this, he said, will be encouraged by an improvement in the judiciary system in Nigeria.
“One very good thing that has happened in this country is the BVN system. You can no longer take anybody’s money and run away easily. If someone collects your money and fails to deliver, there are so many ways, systems and processes to reach him unless he leaves this country with a different passport. But as the judiciary continues to improve, and the ease of doing business in Nigeria continues to improve, online businesses will continue to grow.”
The ultimate vision for Okechukwu is to take HotelMoney global. So far, he has hotel partners in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Mauritius, and Seychelles, to mention a few.
