This may appear to be a no-brainer to some of us here but I sincerely want to have an insight to possibly why Hotels.ng is yet to have an android or ios app. Or maybe there is…
Thanks in advance.
Here to read comments. And learn.
While i was writing this (sorry, sorry, shameless plug), it was the first thing i looked for. Was disappointed i didn’t see an Hotel.ng app.
Without being specific to the brand in question, I think the main question is “Do we really need apps for every service?”
Apps cost a lot of money to develope and maintain.
In most cases, it’s class against business justification.
If you are a serious brand, you might want to take your time with it.
Otherwise lets analyze why some “Big” brands only develope apps for iOS and android without consideration for millions of blackberry and Windows devices on the streets.
A quick search on Play Store shows there’s one for Android with less than 1000 installs.
I don’t know about iOS.
I think the first question you want to ask is who Hotels.ng’s primary customers are and how those people go about finding their hotels. I imagine that most of the people who end up as Hotels.ng customers search Google for “Hotels in Nigeria” or “Hotels in [insert Nigerian city]”. If my theory is correct (let us hear from @mark himself), then most of their resources should be directed towards SEO/email marketing to bring customers to their site, and a great experience on desktop/mobile once they get there.
There’s the question of how they get users to actually make bookings, and not just treat the site like a brochure or directory, but that’s a question for @mark to answer.
On some level, I agree with @Uduak. [quote=“Uduak, post:4, topic:9567”]
Without being specific to the brand in question, I think the main question is “Do we really need apps for every service?”
[/quote]
I’m very unhinged from the idea of an app or even a website to deliver your product. My first step is to figure out who I want to reach, where they spend most of their time (or where they are most likely to pay me attention), and then go set up shop there. So, if it turns out that people like to book Hotels via Snapchat (it’s an example, don’t stone me), then Hotels.ng should to and open a Snapchat account and do business there. If it’s WhatsApp? Same. Facebook? Same. Twitter? Same.
One last question: is Hotel booking a habitual activity? The kind that smartphone home screens are optimized for? Because if your app will not stay on a user’s first page, and opening the app is not habitual, then I don’t see the point.
Plus, you could make your site a PWA, and straddle the fence. My two cents.
(No rhyme intended).
@leslie there’s no need to apologize. I think people only have a problem if you try to act like you “found some insightful post about the subject”, without disclosing that you wrote it.
Thanks for the heads-up! 
Valid point. Upon consideration from this perspective, I feel @mark and co. may seen through this and decided not to chase it down.
Spot on! Really, it’s not about building apps for every platform, but knowing who your audience is, and how they find you, and crafting meaningful experience for them on those platforms. This example is kinda off, but WhatsApp had only mobile apps for years, and yet did very well. Even now, their desktop/web apps are still tied to mobile.
Best thing for any smart business owner is to do the research. Know the numbers. Track the analytics. Have hard facts that tell you about your audience. Then work with those.
The truth is that you are right about this user behaviour and HotelsNG appears optimized for it (at least, better than its competitors)
Compare this to Jumia Travel which has over 100,000 installs. Hmmmm
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jovago.android
These 2 questions really captures my objective for this post.
Because apps, when well built, are generally easier to use. You can sign in with TouchID, tap tap and your done.
I use the Jumia Travel app all the time, I don’t bother going to the website any longer.
It is true that some services do not really need apps, but a Hotel Booking service?
Maybe the more relevant question should be, how many active monthly users does Hotels.ng have, and does this warrant spending money on apps?
It doesn’t really matter that people discover hotels.ng via google search. Apps are not necessarily about discovery but about retention.
This.
Two examples that support the motion are Airbnb and Instagram, both of which provide functional web flows, but their mobile flows provide for much richer user experience, engagement, and retention. It’s also instructive to note that Airbnb and Hotels.ng serve overlapping markets.
If lets say around 80% of hotels.ng users come from Desktop, then why do they need an app ?
I would personally question why a Nigerian hotel booking website needs an app.
As someone mentioned, apps are primarily for retention not discovery. Based on anecdotal evidence, I imagine that more than half of all hotel bookings in Nigeria by value (not volume) are done with four and five star establishments, and that an even higher share of these are done by foreigners. Nigerians don’t have a staycation culture, and even when they travel out of town they’re staying with friends and family for cost and other reasons. If this is indeed the case, there’s little point trying to retain the Nigerian user via an app; he is going to want to delete soon after installation since he doesn’t book hotels so often. The foreign user is probably already tied up with Trip Advisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com since they’ve used them before and are global names.
The only segment that such an app would truly make sense for is the frequent foreign visitor (e.g. international airlines’ cabin crew, Oil & Gas staff, consultants etc ) but that is certainly not viable market since they would probably already have direct relationships with their preferred hotels.
You just went off on a tangent. Your commentary points more to why Hotels.ng is not a viable business vs. if Hotels.ng needs/doesn’t need a mobile app…
Who says that both points need to be mutually exclusive?
Summary of my point is that I don’t think an app (which is expensive to maintain) is a good way to go for a very limited viable market (frequent hotel visitors in Nigeria) for a fledgling business with limited cash to burn (Hotels.ng)
What if the remaining 20% are the Big men that only know how to use Mobile App and they have the power to book 20 rooms for friends and family 
Your argument of 80% cap is not good enough. Remember never leave no stone unturned; Every little charge helps
@kananga, it is important to put JumiaTravels download numbers in context.
Having a good download number might be good for the Jumia Brand since they are driven by ads and incentives - but it does not imply that they have better engagement and revenue.
Jumia brands are often found chasing numbers, hence are not the best to benchmark your product with. Take for example this traffic chart: while JumiaTravel has better traffic than HotelsNG, it did worse across other metrics, plus, the report showed that the 34% of traffic growth is via ad spend
Anyway, I can’t justify why HotelsNG is not investing in apps discovery/retention. But I know that the most important decision a good CEO needs to make is what drives revenue - not what makes it look good
BTW! Let’s ask @mark
My 2 cents
These are very unflattering stats for Hotels.ng though. 65,000 visits in 6 months, and less than 1,000 (meaning traffic from app is negligible) app downloads?
With regards to time spent online, hotels,ng is not a social media site, it is not a gaming site, it is not a dating site, so time spent online might also indicate that users are having a hard time finding what they want on the site, so they have to spend longer looking (You see, we can spin these things anyway we want).
I use Jumia app, and I actually know the hotel I want to stay at before hand, I only use the app for booking. Then I go to quickteller and make the payment there. So the time I spend on the Jumia app or website is quite short, what matters is that they take my money.
Please show me a website in Nigeria that gets 80% visits from desktop and I’ll show you a flying unicorn. Nigeria is a mobile-first market. I routinely see 90% visits from mobile for websites that I manage, and this is not uncommon.
