On 1 February 2018, Jumia Travel celebrated the second edition of the Nigeria Travel Awards, which celebrated hoteliers, airlines and travel websites for their contributions to the success of the travel, hospitality and tourism industries in 2017.
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MD for Jumia Travel Nigeria, Omolara Adagunodo had this to say during her welcome: “The objective of the awards event is to recognise the good work that different players within the travel and tourism industry are putting in to ensure customers are satisfied. As you know, our mission is to democratise travel in Africa, because we believe travel makes better people and stronger business. To achieve this, we want to make travelling safer, easier, and more enjoyable for everyone at every budget.”
Similarly, the director-general of the Nigeria Tourism Development Commission (NTDC), Folorunsho Coker has called on Nigerians to promote domestic tourism by looking inwards and growing the nation’s tourism policy to enable the sector to realise its full potential.
Coker made this call during his keynote address, stressing the need to market, promote and bring the world to Nigeria using the numerous tourist attractions in the country. “To make tourism attractive, certain steps must be taken, which include reviewing laws that don’t go along with recent trends in the industry, training personnel to understand how the industry works, putting infrastructure of tourism in place by investing in tourism assets, producing tourism events to international standards and doing away with bureaucratic bottlenecks that hinder access to finance meant for promoting tourism in the country.”
The 2017 African Travel Awards winners under seven categories are as follows:
• Jumia Travel Booking Award 2017 - Citiheight Hotel
• Travelers’ Choice Award 2017 - Epe Resorts
• Best Leisure Hotel in Lagos 2017 - Golden Tulip, Festac
• Best Business Hotel in Lagos 2017 - Eko Hotel & Suites
• Favourite Local Airline 2017 - Air Peace
• Favourite International Airline 2017 - Emirates
• Best Travel Blog/Website in Lagos 2017 - Irin Ajo
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The inaugural awards held in 2016 ascertained Jumia Travel’s commitment to bettering the travel experience in Africa and to position the awards ceremony as a key event in the travel and tourism sector in each country. This year, they were simultaneously held in eight other African cities including Nairobi, Algiers, Dakar, Abidjan, Accra, Douala, Dar Es Salaam, and Kampala.
