By Jimoh babatunde with agency
reports
Nestled in the the forest in the
rustic town of Ada, Osun State, is a resort that is promoting golf as a niche
tourism product that can help the state showcase its other tourism
attractions as well attract more tourists.
The resort, MicCom Golf Hotels &
Resort, started some years ago as a pastime of a couple who love playing golf
so much they turned part of the land they inherited into a golf course.
Today, that pastime has turned to a
business entity that can be considered the perfect getaway haven for seekers of
leisure, solitude and golf.
MicCom resort has over the years
redefined the concept of hotel services by offering pure teeing-off delight to
all golf enthusiasts, a unique ambience of tranquility and relaxation, while
enjoying a premium sports.
Apart from pulling golf lover, the
serene environment has also transformed the facilities into one of the leading
resort for retreat and conferencing. It has a 90-room accommodation, a
banqueting hall that can sit 500 and three meeting rooms that could each take
40 persons.
Listening to the Managing Director
of the resort, Mrs Bukola Adubi, one gets enthralled in the concept and vision
of the founder of the resort. Her passion is not surprising. She had abandoned
her profession, Pharmacy, for the resort.
Mrs Adubi said: “My parents are
keen golfers and they are from Ada where the hotel is situated. When they
started to be addictive to the sports, they thought okay, we have land that we
inherited in our village, why don’t we do something that we can play golf on.
They had an acre of land that they inherited from my grandfather. They bought
small parcels of land around and did a nine-hole golf course.
“By the time the golfers finished
playing, they would have been tired and needed rest. So, Ponle decided to build
some 24 rooms for the purpose. Later, people who had social engagements such as
wedding too began to ‘borrow’ the rooms.
Not long after, the volume of
golfers attracted increased, and the course had to be expanded to 18 holes. By
2003, they had acquired more parcels of land and increased the rooms to 90.
Thus the need to transform the pastime into a structured business.
“I said okay, I have some free time.
I can help you set it up, put some people inside, put some structures and let’s
see if it is viable.”
Mrs. Adubi disclosed that they had
spent a huge some of money already and no bank will loan them anything
because nobody thought it was viable project. “I think the rest is history,”
she mused.
Speaking on how the resort has
performed, she said: “Quite viable. It has been a very interesting journey. The
first three years was quite challenging because by then, nobody wanted to come
because there was no reception.
Nothing. We had to literally beg MTN
to put up a mast. We had to also beg Glo to put a mast to encourage
communication and since then it was been fantastic.
“We’ve lived off word of mouth
consistently. Again we cannot survive on that. We’ve had guests that come in as
far as from Abuja and Port Harcourt. They drive down. They normally tell us that it
was somebody that had used the facilities that recommended us.”
Adubi said over the year, due to the
its location, facility and the top services it offers, conference and retreat
had taken high percentage of the resorts clientele base. She said: “You know,
the funny thing is, the golf part of the whole set up forms maybe 30 per
cent of clientele.
We have also come to realise that
our golf tournaments or golf as a game, can only be played during the weekend
because of our location. A lot of people that will come, a lot of the high
network proper golfers, are people that are in Lagos, Ibadan, Abuja, and so on.
They have their regular day. All of them can only converge at weekends.
“So, the golf helps us to also push
for the rest of our business which is corporate retreat because this same big
boys of golf are managing directors and heads of companies that would come for
retreats. That keeps us Mondays through Fridays.”
MicCom, she said, is ideal for
family vacations: “We categorise ourselves as having three categories of
guests. I will say 60 per cent fall under corporate retreats.
They are the ones that are always
doing something. Then I have my golfers. That takes another 20 to 25. Then I
have my social: there are weddings, birthdays, honeymooners, and people coming
for vacations.
“We have a huge vacation crowd now
for Easter and Christmas. People that normally don’t come home or people that
travel out of the country for vacation. Now we have an increasing number
of them that would rather come and spend the week with the family.”
On promoting tourism around the
area, she said: “Osun State is vast and fantastic. Sometimes I tell a few
people I know in government that I patronise and advertise your tourism sites
more than the state itself. They are fantastic. I have been to a few myself and
they are amazing.
“We encourage our guests to visit
the tourism sites. We try and encourage corporate people that come for retreats
to have a day off and see the sites. We always encourage a half or full day
tour. Some of these people have never gone out of their comfort zone and when
they go for retreat, they don’t leave the hotel.”
While appreciating the growth in the
hospitality industry in Nigeria, Adubi said one major challenge is that of
trained manpower, especially in such a sector where a lot of untrained hands
find their way in. But she explained that she has been addressing this
challenge by consistent training of her staff.
She notes that another problem
MicCom Resort has had to grapple with is accessibility. Accessibilty, not just
in terms of distance to a major city such as Lagos, but also because of the bad state of some of
the major roads.
Despite all these challenges, she
disclosed that, “I started this whole thing and it has grown so beautifully. I
did some work after my Master’s Degree in Pharmacy. I haven’t done anything in
that area in the past nine years. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else
apart from this business of leisure. Pharmacy is now like my past life and I
feel very fulfilled doing what I am doing right now.”
She added that that she was looking
forward to building a strong brand with the MicCom in the hospitality sector in
the next five years and, “God willing, my next target is to have a hotel in
Lagos with the same brand.”
Pictured during the UK Business Travel Awards 2014 are, from left,
British stand-up comedian Omid Djalili, Qatar Airways VP Commercial
Europe Paul Johannes, Qatar Airways Corporate Sales Manager UK &
Ireland Emma Deering and Senior Vice President Diners Club International
UK & Ireland John O'Hagan.
