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Susan Akporiaye, NANTA President: It’s painful Nigerian govt had no stand at World Travel Market

From Christy Anyanwu, London

The National Association of Nigerian Travel Agencies (NANTA) made an indelible mark at the just concluded World Travel Market (WTM) held in London, from November 6 to 8, 2023. The NANTA team, made up of private sector organisations, on the last day of the event, held the Nigeria Day. It was an occasion to showcase the stuff Nigerians were made of. Many dressed in Nigerian clothes, with Nigerian delicacies served and Nigerian music blaring throughout the venue. The music was the biggest upset as it caused a stir among attendees, black and white alike, who were captivated and kept busy wiggling their waists to the rhythm of afrobeat. 

Saturday Sun, at the event, spoke with the president of the association on the World Travel Market, the Nigeria Day celebration and other issues.

Aside from being a foremost travel player and representative of Nigeria on the global tourism stage, what else should people know about Susan Akporiaye?

I was born and brought up in Lagos State. I am from Oron in Akwa Ibom State; I got married to a Deltan, an Urhobo man. By training, I read microbiology but Susan is somebody that loves travelling. I love to explore.  Naturally, I just love travelling. I believe one of the easiest ways for you to know people is by travelling. When you travel, you get to experience them. I don’t believe in knowing anybody by social media, they will never tell you the true story. I believe in meeting people and appreciating them more when you are with them. When you travel, you get to know what is important to them and what’s not important to them. It helps you to respect them more. Naturally, as a person, one of my hobbies is to travel. So, I turned my hobby into a profession and that is why I love what I do. As a matter of fact, that is the best job in the world and, when I talk about what I do, everybody wants to be a travel consultant. When I go to schools to give lectures about travel and tourism and I ask the question, who wants to be a travel agent, all the children would say I, because I talk with so much passion, because I love what I do. It’s not really because of money. We really don’t make all the money in the world. We have the opportunity to make money but money is not usually the very first thing on our mind.

The first thing on your mind as a travel agent, travel consultant or tour operator is leaving your client totally satisfied, giving them an unbelievable experience, an experience that would make them always come back for more. That is the first thing before money. If you put money first, you are going to mess up the whole thing.

I have my own company, Topaz Travels and Tours. Before I started, I did my research. I went ahead to find out there’s an association for travel agencies. I didn’t believe in say, let us just start. I knew there’s an association for travel agencies. I did all my registration. It’s normal to belong to the association that is the body of the travel agencies so that you can get to know what is going on.

I was the vice president of the Abuja zone. NANTA is an association that has five zones: the Abuja zone, Lagos zone (stand-alone), we have the western zone, with headquarters in Ibadan, and we have the northern zone, with the headquarters in Kano. We have the eastern zone, with the headquarters in Port Harcourt. I started my journey in NANTA as the vice president of Abuja zone. NANTA is two years per term, and I had the opportunity to preside for two years. I did that for four years. I served three presidents before I became president on my own. I was learning under those presidents so that when it got to my turn I would improve on what they had done. I am a grassroots person. I believe in carrying other people along.

I served three presidents and the reason I did that was I was trying to give myself enough time to study, watch and learn. When I was coming on board, I had only a four-point agenda. To unify the association, no segregation, irrespective of your zone, tribe, beliefs, there’s power in unity, with unity we move far; to unify the whole NANTA members all over Nigeria. Secondly, to groom the younger ones. To give them the opportunity to learn. Thirdly, professionalism and training and, lastly, to leave a financially buoyant association. That is why we are in the World Trade Market.

I know tickets make money for us in Nigeria because Nigerians love to travel. In other countries, it is tourism that makes money; tickets do not make as much money. But, for us, tickets make more money than tourism. We tend to move towards tickets more, but I felt we should not put all our eggs in one basket. If something happens to the tickets, what happens to us? Let us explore all the aspects of travel agents, which have to do with ticketing, tourism, hotels, transfers, and let members know that being a travel agent is a whole lot. There is a lot that is happening out there, not just tickets. We opened up many opportunities for members to understand they could do much more. If you do tickets, you will make money; you do tours, you will make money; you do hotels, you will make money; if you do transfers, you will make money as well. So, which one is better? Is it making money from one stream or making money in several streams? That is what I brought on the table to add to what my predecessors had been doing. NANTA is 47 years old this year.

Why are you at the World Trade Market?

I’m naturally a traveller and I love to explore. For whatever reason, Nigeria has always been missing from all these trade shows. When I was the vice president of the Abuja zone, I was attending this trade show with the government. It was Otunba Runsewe that was the DG at that time. He was a very passionate person and he was taking us everywhere. We were beside him in WTM when he went to Berlin; in South Africa, we were there with him. We were attending all these events with him. If you looked at all the stands in WTM, it was always the government and the private sector. There was no stand that belonged to the private sector alone. It was the government and the private sector. But it is not the case for us now. We have missed him so much.

We told ourselves; this is our business and we came as a group last year. That was how we started our journey to WTM. Thank God for our members. They saw the vision with me and they supported me. Everything you see here is from the members, no penny from anybody apart from Otunba Runsewe. He’s no longer in the tourism ministry but in culture, but he still supports us. Last year, we went to him, “Oga, we are missing you, we want to attend WTM,” and he supported us. This year, the same thing. He gave us support and prayers to attend this event when I ran to him.

We are patriotic Nigerians. We are travel agents. We are tour operators and we know that Nigeria is wealthy when we talk about tourism. We are here to promote inbound travel into Nigeria and since we came we have been having a lot of people come to the stand, saying, “Nigeria, we have been wanting to come to Nigeria, we don’t know who to talk to.” We had someone that came and said: “You know what, can I have contacts of tour operators in Nigeria, travel agencies in Nigeria?” And thank God my members are here. We had up to 70 members that came. Immediately they said that, I made my members drop their business cards and I told them any card they picked was legit because they were our members. We had bloggers coming to say they always blogged about Africa but they had not written anything about Nigeria because they didn’t know; and we told them they were at the right stand. They want to write about Nigeria, they don’t have any information, where do they go? Some people have also come to ask about the misery, what do we do? We are Nigerians. Even though we are here by ourselves as private sector organisations, we are also marketing Nigeria. We had somebody from UNESCO that came to say that we should link him up with the ministry of tourism in Nigeria, that there was something he wanted to do with Nigeria, and we gave them the contacts of the ministry and the government to do business with. That is why people are hungry to come to Nigeria. This is not Nigeria’s stand. If Nigeria were here, it wouldn’t be like this. It’s because it is the private sector. At the last minute they cancelled and it’s because of what happened to the minister. It’s not news. If Nigeria were here as a country, it wouldn’t be like this. The minister took ill, this is just the private sector.

What does it take to be a successful travel agent?

Passion. The industry is not easy. People just see the glamour. They see that you just travel; they don’t know it’s not easy. The passion is what will keep you and not let you give up even when it looks like things are not going well. You get training. It’s not a boutique with price tags; it’s a profession, just like you have the profession of lawyers, accountants, doctors. It requires training. We have training locally, internationally, and certification. A lot of people just say, there’s money in the business, let me do it. Those are the people that give us a bad name. When they come, they mess up because they don’t understand the industry. They are just there because of the money. They come in and they don’t know what to do. They mess up the customer’s itinerary, and, because they are confused, they switch off their phones or run away because they don’t know what to do. I have had a lot of complaints, but I tell them these are not NANTA members. We always train our members on what to do and we have platforms. If you don’t know, don’t keep quiet. Ask questions. We call them quacks because they are not trained. Thirdly, patience. We are dealing with human beings. You have to be patient. And, lastly, there’s money in it. But as we make money, we also lose money because, if you mess up a client’s itinerary, you have to pay the client back. If you do not do what you are supposed to do by making the clients know the rules and regulations, the terms and conditions, and something happens and the client is not going again, that is when you’ll start saying sorry, the hotel is not refundable. The client will hold you responsible: Give me my money! It is professionalism that makes you know all these things. A properly trained travel agent knows that he needs to tell the clients the terms and conditions of everything they are doing. Not just telling them verbally, but also communication via email. Those things are what the quacks do not know. A lot of patience and endurance are all you need.

Even if you don’t have the money to set up a beautiful office, all you need is a laptop, because our job is mobile. You need a laptop, business card and you can start. When you have saved up, you can now set up an office. It is one profession you can do without an office; you can do it onsite and offsite. That was why, with all the hardship going on in Nigeria, we can work remotely. With the fuel price hike, we can’t afford to increase our staff’s salary; because of the airline transport issue, sales have dropped, so we reduce the number of days our staff come to the office. Those days they don’t come to the office, they work from home. That’s the good thing about our job: we can work anywhere. The major thing is professionalism.



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