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Hotels.ng is a Nigerian online hotels booking agency which was launched in 2013. The platform was founded by Mark Essien and claims to list over 7,000 hotels from 21 regions in Nigeria.^[1]

History

In 2012, while Mark Essien was studying for his MSc. in Computer Science at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, he developed an interest in the Nigerian technology space. His analysis showed that for an emerging market like Nigeria, a travel/tourism startup would work the quickest. Studying European and Asian models of already-established hotels booking agencies, Mark tentatively created a hotels listing platform (which was what Hotels.ng was, initially.) He purchased a domain name and a list of hotels and put them up on the website.

This domain recorded enough traffic numbers to convince Mark to return to Nigeria from Germany. In Calabar, he continued to list more hotels. He partnered with a friend and they started taking photographs of hotels and signing agreements with as many hotels in Calabar as they could find.

As soon as they had enough hotels listed, bookings were enabled on Hotels.ng. Mark says that users began making reservations from the first day bookings were enabled.

Seed Fund

Shortly after the launch of Hotels.ng, Mark published a few press articles that caught the attention of Iroko TV's founder, Jason Njoku. At the time, he (Jason) was beginning a startup fund (Spark.ng) and looking for good internet businesses to invest in.

After negotiations, Spark.ng made a first investment of $75,000 in Hotels.ng which prompted Mark to move to Lagos to setup the platform there. A few months after the initial investment, the Spark fund made another investment of $150,000. This fund enabled Hotels.ng to continue to grow its customer base and expand its hotel listings.

Startup Fund

On May 26 2015, Hotels.ng received a $1.2 million startup funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network and from EchoVC Pan-African fund. This funding is expected to be used to expand hotels.ng across Africa, starting with Ghana.

The funding follows from the announcement of a profitable 2014 in Hotels.ng, where the platform was said to have ostensibly made $40,000 in monthly revenue in the last half of the year.

Staff

Hotels.ng employs 49 locally-working staff in its Yaba office and outsources and crowdsources its data collection to freelance workers.

Sections

Hotels.ng has five main sections, responsible for various aspects of the company's continuity:

Bookings department,
Marketing department
Development team
Sales department
Operations

References

^ Nsehe, Mfonobong. [www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2015/05/26/nigerias-hotels-ng-raises-1-2-million/ "Nigeria's Hotels.ng Raises $1.2 Million"]. Forbes.com. Forbes. Retrieved 17 June 2015. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

[1] Nsehe, Mfonobong. [www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2015/05/26/nigerias-hotels-ng-raises-1-2-million/ "Nigeria's Hotels.ng Raises $1.2 Million"]. Forbes.com. Forbes. Retrieved 17 June 2015. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)

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 {{AFC submission|t||ts=20150617062857|u=PageCrawler|ns=118}} <!--- Important, do not remove this line before article has been created. --->
+Hotels.ng is a Nigerian online hotels booking agency which was launched in 2013. The platform was founded by Mark Essien and claims to list over 7,000 hotels from 21 regions in Nigeria.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Nsehe|first1=Mfonobong|title=Nigeria's Hotels.ng Raises $1.2 Million|url=www.forbes.com/sites/mfonobongnsehe/2015/05/26/nigerias-hotels-ng-raises-1-2-million/|website=Forbes.com|publisher=Forbes|accessdate=17 June 2015}}</ref>
-Hotels.ng is an online hotels booking agency based in Nigeria. It was launched in 2013 by startup founder and CEO Mark Essien in 2013.
 == History ==
-In 2012, while Mark Essien was studying for his MSc. in Computer Science at the [[Free_University_of_Berlin|Free University of Berlin]], Germany, he developed an interest in the Nigerian technology space. His analysis showed that for an emerging market like Nigeria, a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_Nigeria|travel startup]] would work the quickest. Studying European and Asian models of already-established hotels booking agencies, Mark tentatively created a hotels listing platform (which was what Hotels.ng was, initially.) He purchased a domain name and a list of hotels and put them up on the website.
+In 2012, while Mark Essien was studying for his MSc. in Computer Science at the [[Free_University_of_Berlin|Free University of Berlin]], Germany, he developed an interest in the Nigerian technology space. His analysis showed that for an emerging market like Nigeria, a [[Tourism_in_Nigeria|travel/tourism startup]] would work the quickest. Studying European and Asian models of already-established hotels booking agencies, Mark tentatively created a hotels listing platform (which was what Hotels.ng was, initially.) He purchased a domain name and a list of hotels and put them up on the website.
 This domain recorded enough traffic numbers to convince Mark to return to Nigeria from Germany. In [[Calabar]], he continued to list more hotels. He partnered with a friend and they started taking photographs of hotels and signing agreements with as many hotels in Calabar as they could find.
-As soon as they had enough hotels listed, they enabled booking on the website. Mark says that users began making reservations from the first day bookings were enabled on hotels.ng.
+As soon as they had enough hotels listed, bookings were enabled on Hotels.ng. Mark says that users began making reservations from the first day bookings were enabled.
+=== Seed Fund ===
+Shortly after the launch of Hotels.ng, Mark published a few press articles that caught the attention of [[IROKOtv|Iroko TV's]] founder, Jason Njoku. At the time, he (Jason) was beginning a startup fund (Spark.ng) and looking for good internet businesses to invest in.
+After negotiations, Spark.ng made a first investment of $75,000 in Hotels.ng which prompted Mark to move to Lagos to setup the platform there. A few months after the initial investment, the Spark fund made another investment of $150,000. This fund enabled Hotels.ng to continue to grow its customer base and expand its hotel listings.
+=== Startup Fund ===
+On May 26 2015, Hotels.ng received a $1.2 million startup funding from eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network and from EchoVC Pan-African fund. This funding is expected to be used to expand hotels.ng across Africa, starting with Ghana.
+The funding follows from the announcement of a profitable 2014 in Hotels.ng, where the platform was said to have ostensibly made $40,000 in monthly revenue in the last half of the year.
+== Staff ==
+Hotels.ng employs 49 locally-working staff in its Yaba office and outsources and crowdsources its data collection to freelance workers.
+=== Sections ===
+Hotels.ng has five main sections, responsible for various aspects of the company's continuity:
+# Bookings department,
+# Marketing department
+# Development team
+# Sales department
+# Operations
-=== First Funding ===
-Shortly after the launch of Hotels.ng, Mark published a few press articles that caught the attention of Iroko TV's founder, Jason Njoku. At the time, he (Jason) was beginning a startup fund (Spark.ng) and looking for good internet businesses to invest in.
-Around that time things just started to happen for me and I did one or two press articles which led to a call from the founder of the successful Iroko TV-Jason Njoku. He told me about the spark fund that he was starting and he was looking for people like me building good internet businesses. After a bit of negotiation he put in the first investment of $75,000 and that’s when I moved down to Lagos and a few months later the spark fund put in another $150,000. From there we have just been growing our hotel listings and our customer base.