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…Gives bonanza
From Okey Sampson, Umuahia
There are indeed two hotels today in Umuahia, the Abia State capital – Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort and others. You can only feel the difference, if you try their heaven. As it is often said, it is not how old that matters in life, but how well one has done.
Although Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort may not have been in the hospitality industry terrestrial for ages, but in the past eight years of existence, through excellent service, it has become a force in the industry that as at the last count, it has seven locations, with Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort, Umuahia as the latest.
A 60-room facility with a Presidential Lounge, swimming pool and gym exclusive to it, Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort sits atop several hectres of land at Umuagu, Ibeku, close to the SCID, Umuahia.
With a supersonic structure, rooms laced with the state-of-the-art furniture from Greece, excellent services and holistic cleanlines, it will be difficult for the “Paradise in Umuahia” to have its match in the city.
Zulu Ibrahim is the Group General Manager of Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort and he has this to say about the hotel that has taken the hospitality industry to another level: “We started business sometime in March 2015, in Victoria Island, Lagos, which is a 25-room hotel. It is located on 191A Adeleke Adedemu Street, Victoria Island. At present, we have seven locations.”
Zulu named other locations as in Lekki Phase 1, Lagos; No. 36, Mamman Nasiru Road, off T.Y Danjuma, Abuja; a 72-room facility in Ikoyi, Lagos and the one at No. 11, Onuoha Crescent, in Lekki, Lagos too.
Others are the one at Koffi Anan Street, Asokoro Extension, Abuja and the newest which is located on Umuagu Road, close to the state police CID, Umuahia, Abia State.
“It is the biggest we have in terms of land mass. It is a 52-room hotel with a Presidential Lounge of eight rooms, bringing the total number of rooms to 60. It has state-of-the-art conference facilities. All the rooms are very beautiful and I believe it is the best hotel in Umuahia”, Ibrahim explained.
On the uniqueness of the Sun Heaven Hotels & Resort, the GGM said from his 25 years experience in the hospitality industry, the problems most hotels have is lack of consistency and maintenance culture.
“For instance, the hotel we are opening in Umuahia is fine and everybody is saying that because it is new. With time, some of the new things that make it look good will be going bad, and if they are not taking good care of, the standard will be dropping.”
However, in Sun Heavens and Resort, Ibrahim said they give a lot of attention for the hotel to maintain its originality by continuously checking and maintaining things put in the hotel to maintain its shine.
What magic do management put in place to ensure the hotel dotted all over the country get the much needed attention that has placed it high among its peers? Hear Ibrahim, “To make sure we maintain our facilities around the country to maintain their forms, we have WhatsApp group in every of our locations for maintenance and for operations, two WhatsApp group for each location.”
Going further he said: “If any fault is discovered in any location, they will send it to the WhatsApp group, I will see it and other people will see it too. If after five minutes I have not seen another picture indicating the faulty appliance has been corrected, I will call the manager of that very location. So, since they know I”m always aware, they will fix it.”
Ibrahim maintained that the edge Sun Heavens & Resort have over others is their cleaniness, consistency in service and their maintenance culture. “Even the hotel we opened eight years, it still looks as it was opened today, so, that’s our selling point”, he delightfully explained.
As a result of the nature of the hospitality industry business where the good, bad and ugly character-wise visit with its attendant security challenges, Ibrahim said such has never been a problem to any of its facilities in the country and that of Umuahia will not be any different.
“Our hotel in Umuahia like in all our locations, is very secured. Despite the fact it is located very close to the SCID, we still have our internal security arrangement that gives the entire hotel adequate security.”
The GGM also disclosed that in addition to deployment of security men in the hotel premises, at the entrance of every room, there is what he called video door bell. With this, a customer who lodges in a room in the hotel do not need to pip through a hole to see who is knocking at his or her door.
“The video door we allow that customer to see the face of whoever that is coming into the room, if he is the person he doesn’t want to see, he will then inform the hotel manager. That’s another security measure for us. However, our closeness to SCID, is an added security measure.”
Not yet done with security measures, Ibrahim added: “We run a decent hotel business where company executives and expatriates visit and as a result of that, we don’t allow people not well dressed into our rooms. We ran business hotel where companies come to do human resources and development, so, we don’t admit everybody.”
What about the rooms in this “Paradise in Umuahia?” The hotel’s boss gave an insight. In our hotels including the one in Umuahia, we have rooms furnished with furniture from Greece. Apart from rooms, we have conference facilities in our Umuahia location that can take up to 500 people at a go.
The Umuahia hotel equally boasts of two swimming pools. One is for the main hotel which is located after the open lounge because the hotel has a very large open lounge which people can do events in. Behind it, there is a changing room, there is shower and there is rest room. The Presidential Lounge has eight rooms, it has its own swimming pool, exclusively for VIPs.
The interior of the hotel is quite alluring and Ibrahim stressed that “we compare our hotels with hotels in Dubai, which is compliant to modern day furniture and they are very, very beautiful. All that are in the rooms, from furniture to sanitary wares, everything came from Greece. They are made to last and easy to maintain.”
Hotels of this standard can make customers break the bank to foot the bills, but its not so with Sun Heavens Hotel & Resort, Umuahia. Ibrahim assured much of this, in this manner.
“Going by the standard of the hotel, I consider our charges to be very moderate. Anybody that wants to take the Presidential Wing Will pay N400,000 per night. But because of the present economic situation in the country today, we may give each of the rooms out for N50,000, but the people cannot take less than three rooms per night.”
The charges in other apartments in the hotel are equally customers pocket-friendly. Again, hear Ibrahim: “The Deluxe room is N55,000, per night, but we are doing N45,000. The Super deluxe is N65,000, but we are doing N55,000; the Executive deluxe is 75,000, but we are doing N65,000 and the super executive room is N95,000, but we are doing N85,000 per night.
“Like I said earlier, the Presidential Lounge is N400,000, but we can give out three rooms or four at N50,000 per night per room, one individual cannot just take one room there. We just want to encourage people to use it and have the feel.”
Disclosing that management slashed the prices of the rooms because they are having a two months of promo, Ibrahim added that the hotel was worth even more than the ranking, but that the owners, the investors just wanted to improve the economy of Abia State.
There have been instances where people would lodge in a hotel, yet go outside to get food to eat. Ibrahim said its not so in Sun Heaven Hotels and Resort.
“We have world class kitchen, we can prepare food for more than 200 people at a time. We have four halls here, each can take at least 200 people. We have an underground hall that would take 280 people. We have meeting room which takes 85 and we have another meeting room which takes 65 people.
“Our standard is just that all these halls and meeting rooms could be filled at the same time from different governments that could be doing different things and our kitchen is capable of serving everybody.
“We serve both Nigerian food, we call it national food and continental food. If we have expatriates here, we can prepare vegetarian food, Italian food, Indian food, English and all others. Some of our chefs were trained abroad, they have been working for us for a long time and they know our standard.”
Ibrahim summed up the unique selling point of the hotel thus: “Our edge is that we are very good, clean and affordable. The prices of our serves including food are put in such a way not to scare people away. In doing this, we are not looking at big profits, but just to sustain our businesses.
“When you check into our hotel, you have the freedom of using the gym, you have the freedom of using the Internet and the freedom of using the swimming pool free. We don’t charge for these, they are part of the package. Our customers are also entitled to free breakfast – either English or West Africa breakfast.”
The hotel’s management plans to station 10 brand new cars at the Umuahia hotel for easy movement of their customers who would be chauffeur-driven at a very affordable rate.
Ibrahim has a word of advice for residents and visitors to the capital city of God’s Own State. “I’m not saying that hotels in Umuahia are not good, but we are bringing another standard and I urge people living in the city and beyond, to come and have a feel of Sun Heaven Hotels and Resort.
With our hotel in Umuahia, the era of people coming to do business in Umuahia and sleeping in Owerri is over.”
With commissioning date fixed for sometime in January 2024, there are already beehive of activities at the hotel in Umuahia as it has commenced operations.
