By Omodele Adigun
Beyond expanding Nigeria’s tourism and hospitality industry, Transcop Hotels’ newly launched digital hospitality platform, Aura, is to create new breed of entrepreneurs in the country.
According to its Director, Business Development, Ifeoma Okafor-Obi, who stated this on Monday during a webinar, Transcorp Hotels Plc just created a new bred of entrepreneurs that have special skills that people are willing to pay for, saying the vision behind Aura is also to expand the local tourism and hospitality industry, and make it more accessible to people.
The platform launched recently by Vice President Yemi Osibanjo in Abuja is Transcorp Hotels’ new business expansion platform, leveraging technology to deliver hospitality for people to experience.
In other words, it is a digital platform that connects people to unique accommodation, food and experiences. “We are giving a platform that is a level playing field, that anyone with skills can come on board and show their skills,” Ifeoma-Obi stated.
She added: “We are going to grow a new breed of entrepreneurs. Aura is for everyone. We just created a new bred of entrepreneurs that have special skills that people are willing to pay for, and we are just giving them the platform. Instead of different people trying to open their own sites where they are doing different things; we are giving a platform that is a level playing field; that any one with skills can come on board and can show their skills and can make some money off the skills that they have.
“The vision behind Aura by Transcorp is to really expand domestic tourism. If you think about the hospitality industry, it is a large industry. If you think about country like South Africa, a place like Dubai and others that have really worked on their hospitality industry, it is a billion dollar business. So what we are really thinking about is to expand Nigeria; to use this opportunity to introduce all our offerings on what Nigeria has to offer. Nigeria has so many beautiful places that people are not even aware of. We have all sorts of waterfalls; at least, we have 15 different waterfalls in different parts of the country. A lot of people don’t know that the tomb of Uthman Dan Fodio is in this country.
“We have so many pottery centres, terra cotta and even the Bini artefacts. We have not even scratch the surface of what we can do. We are really into expanding local tourism and hospitality industry. And make more people access the industry.”
Launched by Osinbajo on July 8 in Abuja. While commnding Transcorp Hotels for the initiative, Osinbajo said he was intrigued by the new platform and pointed out its uniqueness.
“I think the unique offering here is that Transcorp Hotels is putting its huge reputation, track record and success behind helping customers choose the best accommodation. I think this is great and it will help revive the hospitality industry especially after the downturn in the aftermath of COVID-19. I would like to commend the Transcorp team led by my brother and the man of many ideas and great execution, Tony Elumelu.”