Oludamilola Adepoju is a hospitality, tourism and leisure professional with varied industry experience across many global cities.
The trained accountant is a fast rising African-born international hospitality, hotel acquisition and asset management expert.
She honed her skills at Marriott headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, and a hotel real estate investment trust, both in the USA and she is currently the director of Lodging Development, West Africa, Marriott, where she leads Marriott’s hotel development activities across the region.
In this interview, she speaks to Obinna Emelike on her experience, the impact of her role on hospitality development in the region, need for right investment, developing other hotel market segments in Nigeria, among others.
Excerpt.
Congratulations on your leading role at Marriott. Why the interest in hospitality, considering that you are trained in accounting?
Thanks, I got my bachelor’s degree in Accounting, however my first job was at the Marriott headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. It was an accounting role, but it provided me with a lot of exposure to the hospitality business. I have always been interested in traveling and I saw hospitality as an opportunity to marry this interest with my career. I started looking for graduate school programs and when I found a hospitality MBA program, I knew I had found the perfect opportunity to make the move. I got an MBA degree in international hospitality management and I have been in the hospitality industry since.
How did you get to this role and what is the experience like?
After years of consulting on hospitality projects and working for a hotel investment firm, I was ready for a role with a hotel operator. I thought a position like this would be the perfect fit for my educational and professional background. I have been in this role for a little over two years now, and I remain convinced that this is a great fit and the right move for my personal and professional development. The role puts me at the forefront of the development of the hotel industry in various West African markets and I have found it exhilarating and highly fulfilling.
What are your responsibilities as the Director, Lodging Development, West Africa?
My role handles the company’s hotel development efforts in West Africa. Since our business model is asset light, we partner with the investors who will build and own the hotels that we operate. My job is to identify potential partnerships that will generate new management or franchise hotel agreements that add new hotels to our portfolio. I receive and source new leads, negotiate agreement terms with potential partners, and coordinate the in-house processes and teams involved in getting a hotel deal from initiation to signing.
As the Director, Lodging Development, West Africa, how really is the Marriott brand doing in the region, when compared with other regions in Africa?
It is important to note that we have the largest portfolio and number of hotel brands globally, and this, of course, also translates to many African markets. Currently, our portfolio includes brands that have been well known and well-represented in African markets, such as Sheraton, Four Points by Sheraton, Le Meridien and Protea. In total, there are 30 hotel brands that can be found in over 132 countries and territories, and in more than 7,500 hotels. Nigeria is a very important and key growth market, and outside of South Africa, it has the largest number of hotels of any African country we operate in. We have eight hotels with five more in the pipeline, and we continue to focus our growth efforts here and in the rest of West Africa. We also have opened and pipeline hotels in Ghana, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Cape Verde, which are all major markets in West Africa.
The Lagos Marriott Hotel Ikeja is the latest and probably, the most sophisticated of Marriott hotels in West Africa. How has the new hotel impacted Lagos and the Nigerian hospitality market?
The entrance of the new Lagos Marriott Hotel Ikeja has elevated the hotel offering in the Lagos market, especially in the Ikeja area. The hotel, no doubt, reflects the newest global design vision for Marriott Hotels and features sophisticated and intuitively designed spaces for today’s modern traveler. It opened in May 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, and this is a great testament to the resilience of the Lagos and Nigerian hospitality market, as well as the confidence of our investors. The hotel has performed above expectations so far and is expected to maintain a very positive outlook in the medium and long term. This new addition bodes well for hotel products that are developed to international standards and at the same time targeted at the right demand markets.
What would you like to see more of in the hospitality industry in Nigeria?
I would like to see more institutionalized hotel investors. Hotels are a unique asset class. We need more investors who will take the time to be educated and understand the exceptional nature of hotel assets, and also build strong structures around hotel ownership and management. We need investors who are willing to invest in standard, international quality hotels at the midscale levels across the country. We need investors who will look beyond the major cities of Lagos and Abuja and into the secondary markets that also have hotel demand generators that are not being adequately satisfied. At the same time, we need increased capacity in the training institutions that produce the pipeline of people who work in these hospitality businesses. The supply of hotels, restaurants and other hospitality establishments will continue to grow in Nigeria and it is important that we have a better trained workforce in these establishments. It is also an effective way of carrying along significant portions of our population in education, job training and employment opportunities.
