THE destination was Inagbe Grand Beach Resort on one of the islands that dot the Lagos lagoon waterway heading to Badagry. The take-off point was the jetty along Queens Drive, Ikoyi where a luxury boat latched to the jetty bobbed to the rise and fall of the waves on the lagoon. Each member of the team made his or her way to the boat, collected a life jacket and gingerly stepped into the boat.
The leather settee felt comfortable. The boat paraded a 1, 000 horse power twin outboard engine. The last person to come on board was a tall, young man in navy blue shirt and white chinos trousers. He had stayed back to ensure that everyone was comfortably accommodated. He boarded the vessel and glanced round to make sure everybody was comfortable and safe. Then he ordered the boat operator to launch the trip.
Ooni-designate, Oba Ogunwusi
In the course of the comfortable 15-minute cruise to the resort, some of us got to know that the person that courteously supervised the boarding was the resort’s owner, then Prince Adeyeye Ogunwusi. Today, he is the Ooni of Ife.
At Inagbe Grand Beach Resort, right from the wooden walkway that extended deep onto the lagoon with the floating lounge on the water, everything about the resort was classy and special. It was also obvious that a broad-minded person who understood tourism conceptualised the resort.
Inagbe Resort is a statement on how to harness the tourism assets of Nigeria and create world-class facility comparable to any getaway anywhere in the world. The surprise as it later emerged, is that almost 90 per cent of the materials used in building the resort was locally sourced or got from the island itself.
Prince Ogunwusi, now known as the Ooni of Ife, shared his vision on how to provide affordable world-class tourism facility to an average Nigerian through Explore card.
He said: “We have a 1, 200 multi-purpose hall, we have a floating lounge and a floating platform that can take up to like 750. After the team-bonding event, you can have a small get-together at the floating lounge. When they leave, they can go back to their rooms and come back. We have facilities for parties and get-together. So, it is a perfect resort for our corporate clients. But over and above our corporate clients, we want to reach out to typical Nigerians, non-Nigerians and even Nigerians in the Diaspora. And another thing is to open up the tourism sector of the country. That is where our social media platform comes in which I will introduce later on.
“The Explore product is something we are launching to make an average Nigerian know that it is not for the elites. It is for a typical getaway destination for your honeymoon, for your marriage renewal, marriage vows and marriage proposals, or to take your family out for the day, maybe out on a weekend treat, if you want to have a day event, maybe a small get-together party. It is very close to the city, Victoria Island and all what have you. Just 15 minutes by boat ride. Even the boat experience by coming to this place is something that is very refreshing, something that is therapeutic, something Nigerians are actually warming up to do now. We have mostly foreigners who come in here. We realise that we have a very huge market, even people from outside the shores of the country, we know, come to see what is happening here. Outside countries like Gambia, Seychelles, even France; they depend on tourism. So, we have very huge potentials in Nigeria, and we realise that the potentials are enormous for us to actually capitalise on.
“The objective of this, like I said earlier, is to let it be reachable to a typical Nigerian. What do we mean? We are going to come up with a scheme that has actually been tested, we want to now come up with it and launch it for the public. It is going to be on point basis. The point basis simply means: when you sign on to have an Explore card, you want to come and have an experience and explore the entire resort. The minimum point you can access is the 25,000 points. Each point is being given at two naira. It can be converted for our foreign visitors to the dollar equivalent. What that means is that if you are signed up to it, we have three different categories of Explore card.
“The objective of the Explore card is for a typical Nigerian not to have that impression that look, it is elites that would come here. No, you can come here with as low as 25,000 points and experience everything that can be experienced at the resort because Explore card comes with some level of discount. It is going to be a loyalty package. From time to time, you gather your points as you keep giving commitments to the resort.
“We are not perfect, anywhere you think we are not doing well, we want to get a feedback from out clients. At the initial stage when we launched it last year, we had so much pressure on demand than even the supply that we were able to meet up vis-à-vis the demand, so we had to slow down, but now we are ready to open the market, we are ready to open it to the average Nigerian and non-Nigerians, for them to come and experience what you can obviously see for yourself. You have moved around, you’ve been to the rooms, you can see how the whole resort is, how refreshing it is when you wake up in the morning, breathing the clean air that is free of pollution; it is a typical getaway.
“It is a culture that we want to try as much as possible to encourage Nigerians. Of course we don’t need to depend on oil for everything we need. It is the non-oil sector that is going to boom because, like I said earlier, some economies depend largely on tourism. So, we want to focus on it and start on a gradual basis, and we will even implore other organisations to work towards how we can make a lot of other varieties of tourism packages that can actually encourage a lot of Nigerians to travel.
“A typical Nigerian likes to travel. The resort is an experience of actually travelling outside away from what you are used to on land. Just travel on top of water, travel for 15 minutes and come and experience nature. So, what we are doing now is that the holiday season is coming again and everybody knows what the foreign exchange is saying. It has really gone up.
“So, we want to encourage local developers in terms of tourism, so that a typical Nigerian could say, ‘okay, I want to come and rest; I want to have a getaway. Price of traveling abroad is too expensive, because a lot of Nigerians are used to when summer comes, when children are not in school, to actually take them out of the country. This is an environment that we want Nigerians to come and feel and experience nature. A lot of people that have been here don’t believe that we have such a place.
“So, for even children, we have a lot of different packages for children, teenagers and youths. It is more of a family-oriented environment, and even for young couples, for them to have a getaway. Like I mentioned, we are even strong with our corporate clients, we want to actually reach out with our tentacles the more.
“So, Explore card is a form of loyalty programme that, from time to time, you can be boost. And it is of three different categories. As you are boosting it, you will be gathering points, points that you can use to do a lot of things at the resort. You will get points for your accommodation and luxury chalets, for business meetings, parties, children fun games, and boat cruise for people to explore what Nigeria and Lagos has to offer.
“In horse riding, we have a lot of horses that we are bringing so that people can go on horse riding, jungle experiencing and quad biking because we have a large expanse of land. We have a floating restaurant right in the middle of the lagoon so that people can actually experience a very romantic dinner and go on the floating lounge to have and experience how to express love and affection towards your partner.”
The Ooni’s vision to provide Nigerians with a getaway resort extends beyond Lagos with plans to replicate the Inagbe experience all over the country. He said: “So, what we are here for is to let everybody know that this actually exists; this is up and running, and we are trying to work towards our objective as a company which is to set up this all over the country, so that we can do a lot of reciprocity programme.
“If you don’t want to come to Lagos, you want to go to the North for an experience of nature there, you can actually go. If it is the east this time round, you don’t want to go to South West. So, our strategy over the next five years is to replicate this resort all over the country and pick each state’s comparative advantage.”
The ancient city of Ile-Ife is rich in tourist attraction, maybe not as a destination in the real sense of the word, but with an Ooni very much experienced in private tourism practice and its importance as well as benefits to a place, it is obvious that Ile-Ife is bound to become a tourist destination in the real sense of the word. In the new Ooni, Nigeria has a ruler with the exposure and experience to help to develop tourism in Osun State and the country. The Nation
