The places I call home

“What,” you ask, “are the African hotels like?”  Answer: it depends.

I currently only have a few data points: Sheraton Lagos, Southern Sun Lagos, Sheraton Abuja, Sage Hotel in Benin City, Sheraton Tunis, and Le Meridien in Dakar.  You realize if you haven’t already that hotel stay quality is a combination of two factors: the physical hotel and the service.  The hotels aren’t amazing, but the service is where things break down.

None of you will probably read through this whole thing.  This goes back in part to my initial entries: most of the reason I write this is for my own archive, and you all get to look over my shoulder.  Sorry for the tome.

As for the physical hotels:

The Sheraton Lagos I've only seen at night because I stay there when connecting from Joburg.  The rooms snug but not London-tiny.  The hotel is dated in style, and the low ceiling in the entrance makes it feel a bit cramped, but it’s not too bad.  The rooms probably got a makeover about 2000 I would guess.  The one thing I can say is that their accounting system is a blast from the past.  They have to have a piece of paper from you, which they staple to a bill.  Also -- this is true everywhere -- you have to actually go to the front desk and check out, which I haven't done in the States in years.  Smoking is allowed in the lobby, with the expected results.

Sheraton Abuja was my home away from home for the first few weekends.  They are renovating the rooms in waves and I've seen people shudder when talking about the old ones.  So far my rooms have been nice and big and with good natural light, but they didn't renovate three key things: the bed, the bathrooms, and the A/C.  The bed seems like the first thing you fix, but they decided to put in fake hardwood floors instead.  As a result, the bed is almost as hard as the floor.  The bathrooms are basic white tile with poor workmanship, and the showers pulse hot and cold water – taking a shower is like playing hokey pokey.  As for the A/C, your room usually stays an OK temperature (~70 F), but the A/C does a poor job of dehumidifying.  Nice furniture otherwise, small (20"?) CRT TV.

The hotel is a big complex, which is nice because you have space and it is a bit peaceful despite being in the city.  There are three restaurant options (buffet with changing international theme, decent Italian, and a steakhouse that advertises its “unique American Cowboy” ambience), a small casino, squash and tennis courts, a club that locals come to, a lobby bar, and another bar.  Everything is old except the renovated rooms, though.  When you walk into the gym you would be forgiven for thinking the equipment has been thrown in there waiting for a garage sale, because it is closely packed and old.

Sage Benin City is my home base and is a shining testament to style over substance.  It only has 40 rooms or so.  The rooms are spacious enough and have essentially IKEA furniture – nice-looking birch, but cheap.  The bathrooms are not nice (basic dirty white tile, no attempt made to spruce it up) but that is different from not being decent.  The rooms all vary, and I specifically ask for two rooms I’ve found that have good sink lighting.  The A/C is the most effective of any of the hotels.  I have yet to have a room without ants, but they are the small kind and are content to scurry around the coffee supplies – for the sugar, I’m sure.  I had a bed one time where I found fleas, and from some red dots I suspect I have bedded with them several more times without actually seeing them.

Sage has a bar downstairs and most of the (African) guests like to hang out in there or next to the pool and drink and talk late, so the music is moderately loud till late.  The place is a very popular night spot on Thursdays, when locals also join.  As for food, I’m not sure which is worse: that there is a very limited selection or that it pretty bad.  They recently changed the limited menu to cut a few things and basically double the price on a lot of other things.

Neither of the treadmills in the gym have worked for a month or so.  It does have one of those multi-use machines, but the fly and leg machines are very sticky.

Despite all of this, Sage still feels like my proxy home.

Southern Sun Lagos is refreshing.  I found myself accidentally drinking tap water one night because I forgot I was in Nigeria.  The hotel architecture/materials legitimately deserve praise.  The gym is spacious and with nice equipment.  They have a buffet that is great, and truly stellar compared to the competition.  Part of its relative niceness can be attributed to the fact that it is the newest hotel of the bunch.  Like the Sheraton Lagos, I’ve only stayed over night while transferring.  It’s certainly the nicer hotel, but the Sheraton is significantly closer to the airport (10 min vs. about 30).

The Le Meridien President in Dakar is not as nice as the Sun, but very close and a great place for a weekend retreat.  It has a grand lobby with four marble pillars anchoring the six-floor atrium entrance.  It is situated right on the Atlantic coast at a bend, so it looks out on the ocean on two of the four sides.  Like the Sheraton Abuja, it has a bit of a footprint and room to roam.  It was a 20 min drive into Dakar city center, but the distance also meant it was tranquil.  My room was great by any measure.  Great, well-lit bathroom, good bed, nice furnishings, and a design that was somewhat modern without being minimalist.  The best part of my room, however, was the balcony, where I could watch the sun set from the fourth floor and listen to the waves exhaust themselves on the coast.  I spent plenty of time there.

My living/dining room in Dakar.  Now I just need some visitors.

While I think all of the above would be true of about any room there, mine did have a twist: I got a big suite, so my room had a second bathroom for guests, a living room, a dining room with an 8-person dinner table, huge display of fresh flowers, and a little area of mostly wasted space off the side with the mini bar.  All told it was probably 1200 sq ft.  I hardly used the extra space because my bedroom was big enough.

The Sheraton Tunis was slightly below the Le Meridien.  It had a great vantage point over the city.  The rooms were nice but nothing amazing.  The nice touch was that each had a balcony, just like the Le Meridien.  The pools (indoor and outdoor) and water features were outstanding, and the gym was also great except for the absence of free weights.  The restaurants and food were nice, except that smoking was permitted almost everywhere (which is the same as the rest of the country – you can smoke in the airport, for example).

One item that cuts across all of them except the Southern Sun and Sheraton Tunis is poor fit and finish.  It looks like they don’t bother to tape before they paint, caulk in bathrooms is poorly applied, etc.  Even if someone designs a great building, African construction seems to dictate that it will be like a nice façade on barn.

Service:

Service in Nigeria is definitely the most frustrating part of hotel life here.  When I first got here I had a conversation with my Nigerian colleague and in the process he mentioned that there is some stigma to serving someone because the cultural implication is that the other person is better.  I can’t speak to the cause, but the effect is certainly visible.

Part of it probably comes from never having experienced a hotel with good service themselves.  The Nigerians who work at a hotel are never going to stay in a good hotel for comparison purposes.  However, this doesn’t excuse the fact that service is mind-numbingly slow.  You expect to follow up on anything at least once before it is done.  This usually has to be done in person because both I and they usually have trouble understanding each other on the phone.

Workers also can't process anything out of the ordinary.  If you try to customize anything you see the guy's brain circuits frying.  This is most applicable to restaurants, such as asking for a side dish other than the default.

I will say that at the Sage, where service is the worst, the manager is a South African and he's there most of the time and zealously wants good customer service.  He’s great to lean on, and he is slowly building up the clueless staff and instituting good practices.  I will also say that I think smiling and saying hi to everyone day in and day out has meant that people like me, making them more willing to help out.

Service is best at the Southern Sun, where they have done a good job all the way around.

Service was much better in Dakar and Tunis than the Nigerian average.  Not sure how much of this is cultural and how much is tied to the fact that Dakar/Tunis have more experience with tourists and the hotels are just nicer.  There could be another factor: hotels in Lagos/Abuja are always full, so there isn’t a real need to provide great service because your hotel will be full provided it meets minimum Western standards of cleanliness.

Addendum:
A Four Points by Sheraton just opened in Lagos, and it was immediately completely full.