By Kunle Aderibigbe, Lagos
Gateway Times can reliably inform that the hospitality haven which was tipped as one of the best in town is becoming deserted due to poor management.
It was gathered that the situation of the hotel turned for the worse on Saturday, February 22, 2020 when lodgers became stranded as one of the two generators supplying electricity to the hotel suddenly packed up, while the smaller one was said to be under repair.
Similarly, the only borehole supplying water to the over 100 rooms in the hotel also has stopped working.
We gathered that efforts to revive the situation failed, and this later caused uproar between guests and the few available staff at work that day with many of the guests asking for refund of their deposits and even threatening to beat up the staff in the process.
Sources said the situation got so bad that the hotel staff resorted to fetching borehole water with buckets for lodgers to bathe and use in the toilet.
When this reporter visited the hotel at 2pm on that day, the aggrieved guests and staff of the hotel were met locked in verbal exchanges, while lodgers were seen moving out of the hotel.
When the reporter asked to speak with the general manager of the hotel, Mr Joseph, he was said to have travelled out of the town at the time and no other top management staff were available for comments. The few staff declined to speak on the matter.
One of the affected guests, who introduced himself as Mr. Johnson Ogunfuyi, said he came from Lagos to attend a wedding party in Ijebu-Ode and decided to spend two days at the hotel, but was shocked at the situation he found the hotel.
“Can you believe that I had used the toilet since morning and could not get water to flush it? The whole room is just oozing out mess. The air conditioning system is not working perfectly and the whole environment is unkempt,” he lamented.
It was reliably gathered that over 50 staff had resigned from the hotel in the last few months due to poor pay and condition of service, while the few ones left are reportedly owed over seven months salary in arrears.
A staff of the hotel who doesn’t want his name in print for fear of victimization confided in this magazine that the process of handing over of the hotel from Equity Assurance Plc which hitherto got the concession deal from the Otunba Gbenga Daniel administration in the state to the latest owner of the hotel simply identified as SUNU Assurance Plc actually worsened the already deteriorating condition of the hotel.
According to information, the new management was reported to have left the renovation of the hotel facilities unattended, while they were only interested in making profits.
Sources informed further that rooms, lavatories and other facilities which ordinarily should have attracted guests to the hotel have all become obsolete.
