American University Hotel offers hospitality in practice – Amine Saad

Never mind the sunshine in Adamawa State. Never mind the media hype about volatility. Just make a trip to AUN and you are home away from home. A Paraphrase from the interview with the General Manager, Amine Saad. Excerpts:

Q. What do you want the Nigerian public, travelers and tourists to know about American University Hotel?

Surprisingly, we are in Yola. We are located at the American University of Nigeria campus. We have 58 rooms, including 6 suites with very classic rooms, well designed. In fact, all our operations are locally designed.

The hotel also has a club, two tennis courts, squash court, two swimming pools and a gym. And on November 19th, we will celebrate our founder’s day and the opening of our new restaurant called “Japhama,” which is a Fulani word for “welcome.” The restaurant has a capacity for 180 people. Along with the restaurant, we also have a very beautiful coffee shop; we call it “Keke Café.” It has a lounge at the bar and a very beautiful laundry. We will be happy to have every one of you there.

The American University plays a very big role in the North-Eastern part of the country; that’s why it’s the first African Development University. All our students are involved in community work which we do frequently every weekend. The same for our staff, many of them are from Yola. They’ve never been to a hotel, they’ve never been to a restaurant, they’ve never knew anything about hospitality.

So, it was a good opportunity for the community to learn more about hospitality management; about servers; about quality food and beverage; about alcoholic drinks. There is a bar for them to learn how to make cocktail drinks; a kitchen for them to learn how to cook; a bakery for them to learn how to bake. All our facilities are designed to be a hospitality school where students can have their courses in our training school and then do their practice at the same time.

So, they cook live and do service live. Nigeria needs this kind of development universities, especially when it comes to hospitality management. We are very happy that we’ve been doing this for the past five years and the company is still developing and growing very fast.

Q. Yola happens to in one of the volatile states in northern Nigeria, how are you coping with insecurity there?

Unfortunately, that’s what is in the media. I have been in Yola for five years now and I haven’t heard or experienced any security issue. I don’t know about Borno or others. I come from Lebanon which is a very small country. Adamawa state is 3 times bigger than my country, but believe me that back home, we have more problems than we have in Adamawa. For the first 5 years, I haven’t had any security challenge. I drive myself early in the morning and late in the evening.

Many Nigerian students have been on campus for the past 5 years. AUN has been there for the past 12 years, same for staff and faculties. We have staff and faculties from 36 different countries and we’ve been there; we lived together and there’s no security challenge.

Q. Are you more comfortable with Yola or you intend to expand southward?

If you succeed in Yola, you will succeed everywhere. And thank God we’ve been doing very fine for the past 5 years. The company is growing very fast and, definitely, it has all the space to expand.

You located the hotel in a community that, according to you, has no experience in hospitality management. How are you managing the culture shock?

Well, when I came to Yola, it was a very big challenge. I would go to the market but won’t find all I need. The biggest challenge is power (electricity). We don’t have power and we run on generator most of the time.

Other challenges are lack of diesel supply and bad representation of that part of the country in the media, which is not true because I live there and I know people who have been there for many years.

Nigerians are very welcoming people. What they need is little bit of training and little bit of management skills. If you have all these, you will have very beautiful results.

Q. What are your rates?

Our rates are very considerate and affordable, compared to Abuja and Lagos. Our classic rooms start from N28,000, including taxes and the buffet breakfast.

Q. What is the distance between the hotel and the nearest airport?

From Yola Airport, it is 20 minutes drive to the hotel.

Q. How do you get patronage from the locals with that kind of rates?

You may not believe this but I will tell you. For the past 5 years, we had guests from all over the world – BBC, CNN, Aljazeera, US Embassy, EU and all the ambassadors have visited us, including all the Nigerian state and local government executives have stayed in our hotel. Four months ago, we had 34 governors who stayed at our hotel at the same time.

Q. What’s your unique selling point? Why should I come to your hotel?

If you are looking for luxury, security, internet, free Wi-Fi access, spa, swimming pool, tennis court, if you play squash, if you looking for good servers, American University Hotel is where you have to go.