My
dream is to become big destination seller
By PRECIOUS NJOKU
Monday, October 2, 2006
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• Sally Ukpo
Photo: The Sun News Publishing |
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Like one born with a silver spoon, Mrs Sally Ufuoma Ukpo,
managing director of Saffy Travels Limited, has been a lucky
woman, having been married to the former military governor
of Rivers State and one-time Communication Minister, General
Anthony Ukpo (rtd). But the office of the first lady and being
wife of a minister did not deter Mrs Ukpo from trying her
hands on other things to make her own money.
She has been a teacher and now driving a thriving business
in the travel and tours industry.
In this exclusive interview with Daily Sun,
the former first lady looks at her going into business, the
challenges and her dream to become a big destination seller
in the tourism and tours industry.
Excerpts:
Background
My name is Mrs. Sally Ufuoma Ukpo. I am the managing director
of Saffy Travels Ltd. I am into the business of travel and
tours and we sell tickets for domestic, international, and
other travelling clients. We also package tours, with special
attention to pilgrimages to Israel, Rome, Fatima, Compostella
and other places of Catholic interest.
I was born in Jos, Plateau State, but my father is from Delta
State. I went to Girls High School in Plateau State, which
is a mission school. I also attended the Federal Government
College, Sokoto, where I did my higher school. After that
I went to University of Ibadan where I studied English language.
I did my youth service in Kano where I taught English language
and drama. I went further to work at Ahmadu Bello University.
I started there as a research assistant and later became a
research fellow. I went for my masters at the University of
Ibadan where I read Communication Arts. After that, I went
back to Zaria and got married to my husband, General Anthony
Ukpo, who was a one-time Minister for Communications and also
a one-time military governor of Rivers State. After getting
married, we travelled to America and when we came back, I
got a job as a lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic, where I taught
English language. I also lectured at the Federal University
of Technology, Minna, where I taught communication skill.
Going into business
When my husband left office and we came back to Lagos, I thought
that instead of searching for a job and starting all over
again I had better go into business. My husband and I looked
into so many factors before deciding to start a business.
I started with a business centre in those days, precisely
in 1989. And it worked out very well then because the economy
was then booming. Then fax facility was newly introduced into
the country and a lot of business people were coming in to
invest. So, it was easy for us to start a business centre
in Victoria Island.
Then, we had corporate organisations who came in to use our
services, we did their typing, send fax messages for them,
and all kinds of office services. But after a while, these
corporate organisations started to get their own offices and
some of them were going out, buying their own fax machines,
photocopiers and so on. So, due to this, the business was
no longer lucrative, especially in Victoria Island. So, I
started thinking of how to diversify and in the process the
travelling agency thing came up. I got a consultant, we did
a feasibility study and we started in 1991. By 1993,we got
our licence and I found myself in the business.
The travel and tour business
I didn’t have any prior knowledge of the travel agency
business. So, I had to learn on the job with the help of the
experts that I employed. I must say that it is a very challenging
kind of industry, which I didn’t know the scope of at
the time I joined. But now, even though it is challenging,
I know it also has a lot of prospects, especially here in
Nigeria where tourism is at a very rudimentary stage. It has
not been developed to the level of some other countries’,
where tourism is a very big revenue earner. But I think that
eventually we will get there, my interest is really to get
to where we shall start selling destinations.
Business obstacles
The major obstacle we have is getting people to travel . We
hope that time will help to resolve the issue and the government
will do something also. And our image needs to get better
in the eyes of the rest of the world. People will begin to
understand and believe that not everybody who wants to travel
wants to run away or is a fraudster because that’s the
problem we are facing now.
But I do know from my experience in this business spanning
over 10 years now that a lot of people who want to travel
want to travel genuinely. And those of them who are fraudulent
and want to run away, know the back door they use to go through.
For us, we just go directly to the embassy and apply legitimately
on behalf of our clients after having them properly screened.
So, we are not running a racket for people who want to run
away.
Initial capital
I got my initial capital from my own source and also from
my husband who put in some money for me to start. At that
starting point you have to get some basic starting capital
and that is the bank guarantee in those days, which was N1
million. You need to get all the initial money to pay the
various fees. It was however not much money that time, so
my husband was able to give me some money. I also took some
from out of my business centre I was then operating. But it
has not been easy. Now, I have discovered that as we are trying
to expand, we need more money and I know that if we have enough
money to expand, the business will be a lot better than it
is now.
Formally, even if you have N3 million you will start off comfortably,
but today, it requires the share capital of a minimum of N30
million. I will say basically, even for the small travel agency,
you need nothing less than N10 million to start, but for the
bigger agencies, you must have in place over N50 million to
be comfortable.
Challenges
The challenges I have faced is trying to keep my customers
in a very highly competitive environment. There are so many
travel agencies, especially here in Lagos. In addition to
the very many travel agencies, I understand there should be
well over 2000 of them, we also have the unseen ones who operate
underground. Sometimes, you have people who are somehow connected
to the airlines, who operate their own agencies without an
office, they have the portfolio people who just move around,
scouting for customers and offering them anything because
they don’t have any overhead to think about.
We also have situations where we have high network customers
who do not have much time, so you need money in place to get
them to travel when they want to travel. If they call you
and say they want to travel, you should be able to get their
ticket ready and then you collect your money later. But if
you don’t have money at hand, it is difficult. In addition,
we don’t have ticket stock, a lot of agencies have their
tickets stock but now you need to deposit money in terms of
bank guarantee for individual airlines.
Before now, to get British Airways ticket stock, you need
to have N5 million in bank guarantee, some others like Virgin
Atlantic is N5 million, some N3 million and others N2 million.
This is money tied down. And for you to have a very high turnover,
you should be able to sell as much tickets as possible, that
means really looking for as many customers as possible. Like
I said before, it is highly competitive and it is not easy
for you to sell as many tickets as possible unless you employ
so many hands and also have some connections all over the
place. So, those are the challenges we face in the business.
Economy
The economy so far has not been too hard on this business
because people travel and will always travel. The only problem
is families who normally travel every year, may now not be
able to travel because they cannot put the money together.
But the greatest handicap even more than the economy is visas,
because as long as Nigerians get visas they will find a way
to travel.
So, we also want to see a way to encourage internal travel
within Nigeria and West Africa, not even the whole of Africa.
So, we are trying to see how we can begin to develop that.
You will find out that Aero Contractors, ADC are already beginning
to develop packages for Calabar-Cross Rivers State. Cross
River State is doing a very good job tourism-wise.
The government has really set the pace for development of
tourism in Nigeria, and I believe that if this tempo continues
in another 10 years, Cross River will be one of the best tourism
destinations in Africa. With the Tinapa, and Obudu Cattle
Ranch during the Christmas festival and all that, I think
Cross River is on its way to becoming a business and tourism
development centre in Nigeria. But we need to encourage Nigerians
to really want to go and relax, to go for leisure. Nigerians
work very hard and they should be encouraged to relax, so
that we can live longer.
There are too many Nigerians with high blood pressure and
the only way we can check this, is work hard and take a break.
And when you take a break, it should not by running round
the stores of London. Let it be a break where you will really
relax, go to a place where you don’t have to cook, all
you do is sleep and wake up, where you will only have to do
things totally different from your normal routine. We want
to encourage that in Nigeria.
Lucrative
It is a commission business and the commissions we are getting
now are percentage on every ticket you sell and that is for
the international tickets. For African tickets, you get six
per cent and British Airways known as the processors of all
these things and all other airlines look up to it. They are
the biggest airline we have here, so they started to cap commission
and instead of giving us nine per cent, they now give us six
per cent and I am sure other airlines will soon follow suit.
In other parts of the world, like in America, I don’t
think they give commission, they are allowed to charge, charge
your customers for the services, but here we don’t charge
our customers for the services.
Although I know it can be lucrative if you do it well, but
it requires much hard work, it is a very stressful kind of
business. But you really have to enjoy it, so that you don’t
feel the stress.
Patronage
So far, the patronage is better than what we used to have
in Victoria Island. Like I told you, we have to reach out
to corporate customers, we have to reach out to groups who
want to travel and we are very interested in the group who
want to travel. We have to reach out to schools because we
are also interested in the youths, to begin to try and bring
them up. So, that they can learn to relax from the time they
are small, so that when they grow up they will know that once
in a year they are supposed to take a short time off to rest
and come back again to work and continue.
Fulfillment
Yes! I will tell you that I am fulfilled. For me, I think
I love ideas, I like to think a lot. So, it gives me that
opportunity to think, to write, to see, to do. So, I am interested
in all these things. So, I think I will say am fulfilled,
it gives me the opportunity to meet many people, which is
nice.
Future plans
My future plans are still tourism inclined. I am still looking
forward to a time when we can develop local tourism to a very
high level. Also, I am looking to a time when people will
come here, buy tickets, call us and know that we are here,
because we are really interested in people, we want to satisfy
them. We want to make them happy and we want them to know
that we are interested in them. So, it is not just being an
agent and looking for money. No, we are also interested in
the development of our clients, whether children, family or
corporate organisations.
Dreams
My dream is really to become a big destination seller. If
I can get as big as Thomas Cooke that is my dream.
Advice
My advice to people who travel outside and those who want
to travel is for them to believe more in the travel agent
because there is much skepticism about travel agents. I don’t
know where all that is coming from because we deal with the
airlines. We do not make the tickets ourselves, we don’t
have airlines let alone to start flying them ourselves. So,
we are working for airlines, we are working for the people
who are travelling.
We are here to help you, so you don’t have to do anything,
all you need is to pick up your phone and call us, we will
come and do our best.
People should also make out time for overseas travel, if you
want to go abroad, give yourself time and plan it, so that
you don’t run helter-skelter at the last minute.
If you know you travel for summer every year, when you come
back from the previous one, plan for the next one, so that
you don’t have a situation where you run up and down.
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