 Now the global hospitality business has been in a mixed-grail of sorts. African economists have been harmed by the consequences of COVID-19 and used economic restrictions in the hospitality industry, leading to what economists have referred to as economic scarring. Despite the challenges operating in the Nigerian hospitality sector are witnessing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, analysts say the best time for any decedent investor to inject funds in the sector is now. Adding that COVID-19 should not be a barrier to investment. Hotels that will remain relevant in the future would need to adapt to the business operations and companionship with new trends and emerging hydraulics of the industry. Now the hospitality industry is indeed our focus for today. Welcome to Business Insight and Plus TV Africa. I am Justin Acadone. Now the Finance Bill 2021, petrol import as well as 5G rollouts, mid-headlines in the business Nigeria. Here are the highlights. The Finance Bill 2021 has made it mandatory for commercial banks to demand tax identification number from individuals seeking to open an account with them. The bill also empowers banks to demand TIN from existing customers if they wish to continue to operate the account. The bill also makes it mandatory for non-resident firms such as Google and Twitter to pay taxes to the federal government of Nigeria. The leader of the Senate, Yahya Abdullah, he stated this on Wednesday in his lead debate on the bill sent to the National Assembly by President Mohamed Abouhari. The cost of premium motor spirit also known as petrol imported into Nigeria from January to September this year, surged by 55.56% to 2.52 trillionare from 1.62 trillionare spent in the same period of 2020. The development came amid the federal government's plan to remove subsidy from petrol by February next year. Already all marketers have began plans to resume importation of the PMS as soon as the government deregulate the downstream sector of the petroleum sector in the first quarter of 2022. Petrol's 2.52 trillionare import bill for the first nine months of this year is 47.37% and 25.37% higher than worth the amount a country spent on PMS import in the whole of 2019 and 2020 respectively. Data obtained from the National Bureau of Statistics show. The House of Representatives Committee on Public Accounts has resolved to investigate the utilisation of 2 billionare paid to the National Institute of Pharmaceutical Research and Development for Intervention and COVID-19 from the SEVIS-WIDE VOTE account by the federal government. Chairman of the committee Oluwaleo K called for the probe when the Acting Director of Finance and Accounts of the Institute, D'Azama Levi, appeared before the panel to defend spending of relays made through the SWV from 2013 to 2020. Levi could not give satisfactory explanation to all questions raised by the members of the committee on how the intervention fund was disposed, which prompted a member to call for probe. The Niger Communications Commission says Niger's 5G plan will allow efficient allocation of spectrum for deployment and ensure its effective deployment in major urban cities by 2025. The commission also disclosed that much anticipated mock auction of the 5G spectrum for qualified telecommunication companies would hold on Friday, in preparation for the main auction scheduled for Monday, December 13, 2021. These were disclosed by the Executive Vice-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer NCC Professor Uma Dhanbatta at a capacity-building workshop theme, 5G deployment and the next level of Nigeria's development, organized by the commission in Kanu on Tuesday. Welcome back. Those were the stories that made headlines in the world of business for this week. Now, for hoteliers who are interested in maintaining and attracting new customers, they would need to emphasize safety and hygiene in the operations. Furthermore, they should have sufficient knowledge of trends in which customers would be interested to guarantee their comfort in the hotel's environment. Joining us on the show this time around to look at the future of the hospitality industry in Nigeria is Ola Mokor, she is the CEO of Lumzi Suites. Many thanks for joining us on the Business Insight and Plus TV Africa Olaoma. Thank you, nice meeting you. Yes, same here. Let's talk about the sector, you know COVID-19, you know 2020, everyone was a bit scared and the whole industry was actually one of the most affected, either for Monza, no entertainment, no going out and no money. So how would you say this sector has been thriving since then? So I think for 2020, a lot of organizations had to learn how to adapt. So if you watch hospitality is very high-contact, so in the end people move around, once they consider to move around they find places to stay and you know people have to attend to them. So when COVID-19 came the hospitality sector was one of the worst hits after the travel industry. Reason being that there were no more travels and then you will also know that most hotels don't always rely on their lodging alone. A lot of them rely on their hall spaces, entertainment, events, you know and then suddenly there were no events. Even when you know the lockdown was lifted gradually you will notice that there was a restriction on number of people who could gather from 20 to 50, that meant that if you were big on your conference spaces or your event spaces there was no money. So what were we going to do? So we were at hard hits I will tell you but then you will also know that I mean necessity is the mother of invention. So people had to learn to adapt. So it looks like COVID isn't going anywhere. No it's not. At first it was like okay let's wait it out and everybody was waiting it out but now we've seen that lockdowns don't work. What organizations should be thinking about is how do we survive regardless of COVID because while we're waiting it out and then we saw the Delta variant and now we're looking at Omicron. So the best the people who will stay afloat are the people who are learning to move with the times, the people who are swimming, the people who are swimming regardless. If you look at how organizations used to hold meetings before schools everybody was face to face. Now it's very common for someone to invite you for a meeting and it's online and it's fine you know so but how does hospitality where you have to come in book your hotel and all that. How are you going to do online hotel? I wonder how that would work. Now let me tell you how that works. If you remember chains like the Airbnbs and all the other people if you notice the whole shutlet thing came up and became very prominent during COVID because you were now having hotels that had no contact you only called someone on the phone and then you had to come in a day or two and clean but you were basically on your own. So that started you know all that started even hotels big hotel chains started doing service departments by the side somewhat you know just to be sure but now hotels are getting a bit I think we're getting there right now in developed times we're having things like contactless checking you know things like that's where you don't even have to you may see someone at the reception but you don't have to talk to the person. Okay but has Nigeria actually moved towards that trend are we doing the new norm right now? Funny enough a lot of all this a lot of all these solutions are very most of the larger hotel chains are starting to access them gradually but they're not that expensive. So why we're not expanding? Really so I think a lot of problems that we face in our sector is people being able to embrace change as quickly as they should because even for us that's part of our plans for 2022 we're already in talks with people who will do that for us where I mean guests don't have to while you're in your house you can book your hotel online which you're already doing which everybody's already doing but then after booking online can't you check in online all you need is your name your information scan your ID or whatever and send to them so that when you arrive at the hotel you don't need to stand in line and talk to anybody. Once you say your name your key is available to you in fact some people give you a barcode on your phone so that your but yes so that your barcode once you get to the door yes it's you know the barcode you can scan it on the door of the hotel or the door of your hotel room and the room opens. Oh wow so everything you need to order rather than you know calling room service every now and then what do you have what do you you can do everything from the hotel app on your phone before you arrive so invariably right now we're going to see a less contact them services in the hotel business are going forward exactly okay and it does not really require as so much capital outlay for that to get in it's not it's not if you look at the manpower involved manpower man hours and the fact that i mean if you look at the hotel industry in Nigeria you will know that we actually need standardization yeah i was going to come to that you know because it's like if you're looking at the money involved is really not a lot i can assure you it's not but yeah no it's not okay but the thing is you know a lot of operators are still within the space where or the age range where embracing technology is challenging it's just like when a lot of organizations went online you know started having zoom meetings i know how it was challenging at first exactly especially for people above 40 you know having to log in online having to know when to unmute and mute yourself you know so a lot of them are coming to that point where they haven't even finished understanding social media then you're telling them to take their entire customer service online you know so all right now i'm glad you mentioned standardization you know what is what obtained here in Nigeria is it like before you get into the hospitality industry you need to get into some sort of a group an organization an association is it regulated in Nigeria what obtained here or is it just an all commerce affair so it's regulated meaning that you can't have your hotel license except you are registered with liquor state government of course okay and then before you can register your company as the full service hospitality firm before the CAC even you know starts looking at your papers there are places you have to have gone to the NFI you and all that because hotels are considered as one of the places where people can bring in a large sums of money so of course the ESCC the NFI is a branch of ESCC so they have to at least know about you and have your data so all those things not that is not regulated but because after that you know after you get your license and pretty much that it looks like everybody is pretty much on their own and people can't try tend to you know operate their business the way they understand so there's no sort of sanity per say so apart from the large hotel chains which are on the force to know which i mean for most of them if you were in a particular you know hotel belonging to a particular chain in a particular town and let's say i'm in Lagos and i'm in that kind of you know hotel and i was to travel to and i booked the same kind of hotel i know exactly what to expect exactly all right but we don't have that around here so here you know people mop up capital all right and you know i'm going to set up a hotel and start thinking what are those things i see in other hotels okay i need to put in mind i put AC i put fridge i put security i put all that and then at the end of the day we don't know whether you're five star four star three star or no star all right let's talk about some of the challenges that you know hoteliers and the sector you know face in Nigeria you know most times people complain about infrastructure electricity which is like the bane of most industries what are your peculiar challenges in this sector you see that electric sits here oh my goodness you know as early as as recent as may of this year yes we used to get diesel for about 240 per liter now we're on 320 well what margin of over six and it looks like you know the way it's been going it's like when you finish you know every hotel has how they make their orders so when you get your first order and you're running out and you call your dealers there's always a markup oh wow it's been going like that consistently so meaning that what i bought in may wasn't what i bought in june wasn't what i bought in july definitely what i not what i bought so it will actually affect you know the bottom line so how do you now you know live above water exactly because the thing is um there's a lot of competition right so you can't just wake up and start jacking up your prizes because Nigerians are very price sensitive especially i agree i am very very price sensitive and you know they have they already have a budget about how much they expect from any kind of hotel that they're going to and if you wake up overnight and jack up your prices they go to your nibble so now you have to be very very tactful with your pricing meaning that you now have to rely a lot on turnover and then you have to see what you can do about the price of your food and beverages which is another thing that also took everybody by surprise this year yes the price of inflation that was just skyrocketed but then you can't skyrocket your prices the way the price of food skyrockets because you have to understand your target market okay and the fact that they are very price sensitive and that you have competition so what are you going to do you think of what are the values am i going to add okay what different how am i going to make the guests really wild okay so what do i do differently what do i do differently so that they will be willing to part with more money and i can stay afloat okay so it's challenging but we'll get there okay now everyone is talking about the omicron variant and indeed the hoteliers are not left at now what would you advise to operators so that they don't actually get subsumed in all of this so right now we don't even omicron is just i don't think it's more than a week old they don't even know much about it so we don't know much about it about infection rates about how severe it is all that is still being watched right now so the thing is after omicron who knows there may be another one and another one and another one so it means that it's time for us to embrace change okay it's upon us so you either swim with it or become a dinosaur so it's best to embrace technology which is why i said like for my team that's what we're working on next year how we're going to expand and then make sure that our guests have this kind of experiences where we take a lot of our customer service online so it's not that you're going to stack all your workers but you train them more okay so to be techy exactly so that those orders that you're calling the receptionist by midnight you can actually chat on the hotel app on your phone and your orders are taken and delivered to you real time real time all right okay so let's try and round up on this i'm discussed now you know for on this show we try as much as possible to give advice and insight to people who would actually want to get into this particular line if you were to advise right now you know for someone who is thinking of getting into the hotel business and that they are wondering should i invest there's kovid what if there was a lockdown what would you say to them what are the threats what are the opportunities let's just give some sort of advice to some people who blend one or two things your camera is just this one go straight up all right so i will say come on board because even in developed countries it's happening you know a lot of all these tech driven hotels are raising a whole lot of money and giving a lot of assurances to their investors even kayak which is what used to be a booking site is now basically trying to find their own solutions to so everybody is going online it's time we embrace and so i will tell them that there are a lot of opportunities i mean you can't all dwell be pessimistic and say there is things are expensive this is like expensive and everything you have to find a way to make it work for you and nigeria has 200 million people that's a lot of numbers to play with so just throw the numbers and indeed and do your maths at the end of the day you might be able to you know leave above all the stuff exactly and start small if you haven't done it before so you don't get overwhelmed all right start really small and then all right well we just have to say a big thank you to you for all the insight that you have you know brought to the show today and of course some people must have learned one or two things we do appreciate your time thank you thank you too it's a pleasure all right and just before we go here's a piece of i'm chairing these four tenants in lego state the government says it has set aside five billion narrative cakes that the state monthly tenants scheme in january next year commission of a finance dr. rabiolo announced this at the second lego's real estate marketplace conference and exhibitions on wednesday our reporter i love you cook what you do can tell us us more in this report thank you so much these are stakeholders of the real estate sector gathered here they were prepared to find solutions to some salient issues affecting their practice the real estate sector has remained a very profitable investment worldwide in lego's the real estate sector has no doubt grown in leves and bounds toke bensin awuinka is a special advisor to governor so won lu on housing she disclosed that the state government is desirous of housing investment partnerships there is need for us all to know government's policies put in place and how the knowledge of all these policies can assist us in making informed decisions in respect of our investments as a government we have realized this fact and as such have been making business friendly policies that can assist would be investors and investors who operate in a conducive business environment making the real estate sector attractive to investors and provision of decent and affordable shelter on a sustainable basis for all lego's is one of the top most things in the minds of governor baba jude's own lu the governor assured the investors of ensuring they no longer encounter land grabbers some of the things that we realize which we're working on is the issue around ownership of land so there's so many land right that government has not put proper title on which omonile and other families member have you know title on one thing that was constantly caused by panellists was regulation they need to regulate the real estate market lego's is expedient it's something that we must do and so whether it is on the side of the supplier whose building you know regulation is key the role of the regulator itself is it a police or an enabler my suggestion is that we should please ensure that this regulator is an enabler not a police the annual conference and exhibition is aimed at facilitating the process of attaining the objective identifying and removing all the obstacles pragmatic actions and innovative ideas from lego's love for plus tv africa indeed it is some charities for logosians are come 2022 and that's the size of the show for today i am justin akademi let's do it again next time bye for now