The Oak Plaza Hotel is one of the leading three star hotels in Ghana offering personalised services, and this has endeared it to the Nigerian market where it gets a chunk of its business from.

In this interview with Franklin Ihejirika at the recently concluded Akwaaba African Travel Market in Lagos, Semira S Anku, the group sales & marketing manager of Oak Plaza Hotel-East Airport, Accra, Ghana speaks on the unique selling point of the hotel, and why it is the favourite among Nigeria clients, moves by the hotel to expand into apartments and build solid indigenous African brand among others.

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How important is the Nigerian market to your hotel?
The Nigerian market is very important to our hotel business because we get a lot of business from Nigeria, that is why we don’t take this market for granted.
What kind of clientele do you get from Nigeria, business or Leisure?

We get both, but we get more of the business because we get a lot of corporate clients who do business with us. I was just looking at a list of Nigerians that come to us, you see a lot of companies that patronise us. We do a lot of business and we do leisure as well . But it depend on the season, like Christmas is coming, obviously Oak Plaza has a special rate for family who want to come and do Christmas, you see a lot of families coming in during this time and even during Easter period.

Statistics of Nigerian clients, peak and of peak period?
I will be very honest with you, we get about 47 percent of our clients from Nigeria, is quite high. This is made possible with the help of everybody, we have a good working relationship with Nigerians, the media has been very helpful, some time we don’t have all that media budget all the big hotel have, but I think everybody has been highly supportive. We have corporate clients as well those who do business with us as well from Ghana. So obviously clients who are coming from Nigeria, we book them into the hotel. Like after the Akwaaba fair am going for sales scores. I don’t just come for the fairs and leave, am going to be visiting a lot of companies before leaving to Ghana. Is just the effort of us all including you and us from sales to build the Market.
What is the rating of Oak Plaza Hotel?
I can tell you that Oak Plaza Hotel is a three star hotel, but we pride ourselves in giving four, five star service, when you go online you can review us on Tripadvisor and others platforms, you will read things like very clean rooms, friendly staff. When you come to Oak Plaza you will fell that touch of personality in the brand and that is what keeps us going because everybody now claims to be nice which you don’t get in the bigger brands. They are big, they don’t do personalised service, but we have people who even wake up in the morning as early as 6am just to speak to our clients to ask them, are you okay?, did you sleep well?, do you need anything or do have anything i need to do for you?, and all that, so that personal life style we give in our hotel which other brands do not have, is the reason why we get a lot of clients.

Expansion: How many properties do you have in Ghana?
We currently have three properties in Ghana, but very soon, the Hotel is likely moving into building up of apartments, that is why we have the first apartment which is the Oak Plaza Suites which is more of the luxurious apartments. So that is the focus now, we are going to help improve the current hotel and gradually expand into building of apartments

Is Nigeria the niche market you are trying to capture now?
Yes, off course. We have some clients who come on a very long stay, and if you are in the hotel, you cannot have a kitchenet where you can cook, boil or do little little things for yourself. So if you have a client staying for a long time, you rather suggest they go into apartments or residences. But that doesn’t mean we focus our attention on our long staying guests, we have guest who stay with us for three months, four months, because we have that homely feel. The way staff relate with you is homely, some are happy to stay with us for along time, we even have clients staying with us for six months, eight months and all that, but they are happy.
We opened East Legon in 2003 and we opened East Airport in 2009. The Oak Plaza Suite we are officially going to do the soft opening soon. Oak Plaza suite should be available for every body from the end of September upwards.

No of Rooms the hotels have?
For East Airport, we have 82 rooms, for East Legon, we have 12 rooms, for the Oak plaza suite which is the luxurious apartment, we have 20 rooms, but some of them are one bedroom suites, some are two bedroom suites.

It seems you are looking at building the Oak Plaza brand as an indigenous brand?
The success of Oak Plaza Hotel has been tremendous, you come to Accra, Ghana now every body knows about Oak Plaza Hotel. About two years ago, I said is better we build an indigenous brand and to rely on all the franchise brand, because I believe that we as Africans, we can do it. We are looking forward to people buying the Oak Plaza Hotel brand even in Lagos Benin and all that and then we expand it, it has been very good. Currently, we won best three star hotel award continuously for two years in Accra, this year we are yet to see who will win it, it has been very good, the feedback is good, but there are more rooms for improvement because if you are fighting with a giant then you have to be ready. But we believe that as part of our mission, we want to expand in Africa and then gradually we can go into the international market as well.

Location of the Oak Plaza hotel?
Oak Plaza Group of Hotels currently consist of three main hotels in Greater Accra and Ashanti Region. We have the East Legon Hotel which is a just a 15 minutes’ drive from Kotoka International Airport and Oak Plaza East Airport, a 82 bedroom facility which is just 10 minutes’ drive from the Kotoka International Airport. Our plush Oak Plaza Suites provide luxurious comfort for business and leisure travellers and is also a 10 minutes’ drive from the Kumasi Airport in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.