Transcorp Hotels to build 5-star hotel in Lagos

From Abubakar Yunusa ABUJA

Transcorp Hotels Plc will build a five-star hotel in the upmarket Ikoyi neighbourhood of Lagos, Dupe Olusola, its managing director, said on AriseTV on Thursday.
The decision is part of the broad plan to sustain post-pandemic recovery after covid lockdowns tipped the hospitality firm into a brief but substantial loss in 2020.
“We are expanding to Lagos, Ikoyi Glover and this is going to be phenomenal, a five-star hotel that offers accommodation, event space, restaurant, health & fitness, everything,” she said.
The facility is planned as a 300-room hotel towering 20 storeys alongside a 21-storeyed office block, with construction cost estimated at $110 million.
Mrs Olusola said her company is also innovating to stay ahead of the competition and is building a 3,500 to 5,000-capacity event centre in Abuja (the location of its flagship Transcorp Hilton Hotel), due for delivery in the first quarter of 2024.
Transcorp Hotels counts Texas-based Hilton Hotels & Resorts as its partner. It launched a hospitality platform, Aura, in July 2021, enabling users to book to stay in accommodation across thirty states in Nigeria.
The CEO said there are over 5,000 listings already on the platform combining hotels and short-let apartments.
Meanwhile, shareholders resolved at the company’s annual general management held on Monday to sell off its 100 per cent equity stake in Transcorp Hotels Calabar Limited, which has been racking up losses for at least the last two years.
The subsidiary recorded over N1 billion in revenue for last year, the bulk of that eroded by operating costs, leading to a loss after tax of N269.3 million.

Transcorp Hotels, the hospitality division of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria, increased profit by more than double in 2022 after revenue surged by 46.8 per cent to N31.4 billion.