TheCable

Mark Essien, founder of hotelsng.com, the biggest hotel booking site in Nigeria, suggests he is not feeling a pinch of the current economic recession facing Africa’s most populous nation.

At 7:33pm, on Wednesday, August 31, 2016, he tweeted: “Honestly can’t tell what is happening but in the midst of this recession, people are booking hotels much more than before!”

Honestly, can't tell what is happening but in the midst of this recession, people are booking hotels much more than before!

— Mark Essien (@markessien) August 31, 2016

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A minute later, he followed it up with this: “The month before last was record-breaking – and just saw this month’s report – and it’s even better.”

As typical of Nigeria, he got many responses from his teeming Twitter followers.

One person wrote: “The times are hard and people are turning to sex for comfort, hence increased hotel bookings.”

Apparently, the crave for sex has actually been proved by Martin Lindstrom, a Time Magazine Influential 100 Honoree and author of buy.ology.

“When we’re operating in survival mode, fear and sex become our two main drivers,” the Danish author had written.

According to Taiwo Obe, multi-award winning journalist founder of The Journalism Clinic, “one comment stood out: @marksessien set up online mini-questionnaire to ASK the consumer WHY current choice vs. previous”.

“That comment was by Mr Lampe Omoyele (pictured), a marketing strategist, brand builder and coach with strong strategic, commercial and execution capabilities built over a 25-year career in Sales, Marketing and Project Management roles in top-rated multinational Companies such as Cadbury, Airtel, Nutricima (a PZCussons Company) and GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare,” Obe said.

“I call him ‘The Guru’ because he is the master in his field – spend a little time to read all the recommendations on his Linkedin profile, but he’d rather just be Lampe Omoyele.”

HOW TO BOOM IN BUST

Buy.ology

In a bid to help businesses boom in bust, Obe spoke to Omoyele on sharing his “deep insights on consumer behaviour with people who would want their enterprises — small, medium or big — to be ahead of the pack, particularly during these turbulent times”.

On Saturday, September 24, 2016, The Journalism Clinic, hosts ‘The consumer behaviour Guru’ at The Hub, 2 Anifowose Close, off Adebola Street, off Adeniran Ogunsanya Street, Surulere, Lagos.

From noon to 3pm, Omoyele will be speaking on ‘How to win over consumers — especially when the times are hard’.

The three-hour booming-in-bust session is absolutely free.

Martin Lindstrom’s best seller, buy.ology, will be won at the session.