ENTERPRISE
Passion is my driving force
It ’ s an impressive piece of real estate , recessed from the major Lekki-Epe Expressway but quite visible to the passer-by . Unlike its counterpart in other parts of Lagos , this property sits on sprawling grounds . Interestingly , with the economic recession , when most businesses are keeling , over , CEO , Jonathan Odega , captain of the Orchid Hotels ship is throttling full speed ahead .
How did you conceive the Orchid idea ? It came in several dimensions . The fact that I trained as a building engineer and aall through my youth , I had thought of a construction company to create a platform to employ people and add a lot of value to the environment and change some of the things that I had thought are not the way they should be . And then along the line as I was travelling around and then I would be in hotels and then I found that a lot of things were not right the way they were being done . At a time I began to conceive the idea of entering into the arena and playing so that you can actually get some of these changes to be brought to bear . Secondly , if you watch the game of Monopoly , you will see that hotel development is the height of it . Monopoly is a real estate game . So from construction , I gradually moved into real estate development and from there one metamorphosed into building and running hotels . Thirdly , the industry has been dominated by foreigners and then you find out that our people go there . Look at all the big hotels and tell me if you can find a black man in Nigeria as GM . You will not find one . They will tell you to your face that a black man cannot be a GM in our own country . That is sectionalism and it is not right . I felt that the only way to bring about a change of this trend is playing in the field oneself . So then the opportunity came to start . One had done a lot of real estate development . And , of course , hotel development is really real estate . If you understand the concept of laying out structures , having the user in mind , from day one you are already beginning to give the service and if the infrastructure is correct , the facilities are right ; the job of managing the place becomes easier . So it ’ s more or less 80 % facility management of real estate . With all these things , it was very easy for me to slide into these shoes . You mentioned that when developing , one has the user in mind . That means that whoever is the user has priority and has ownership for that time he ’ s spending . You are just custodians for the user . The essence is that once you have developed
18 invests . ng - MARCH / APRIL 2017