Nigeria’s online hotel booking company, Hotels.ng is going public.

This move will make Hotels Nigeria's first Business-2-Consumer, B2C e-commerce company to be publicly quoted.

As you may have heard, sometime this week some members of the Nigeria Stock Exchange, NSE paid a courtesy visit to the hotels head office in Lagos.

That got some industry pundits wondering what was going on between the two.

But it has now come to light that the booking platform is finalizing plans to list on the Lagos bourse.

The Chief Executive Officer of Hotels, Mark Essien while speaking at BounceTv technology programme, 'Talking Tech' on Friday, confirmed that his company expects to get listed by 2018 or latest before the end of 2019.

“I think it is an option that we are exploring as many other tech companies are also doing. The Nigerian Stock Exchange is interested in having young companies that are growing quickly to come and list on the market and to get people interested in trading their shares,” Essien started.

“We have communicated with them. We have also indicated interest and I think it is something that we are working to see if at some point in the future we can actually make this happen,” he said.

Asked when specifically, the listing may happen, he said: “Listing is not a trivial process. For you to get your company in shape to list, it can take a long time. If anything, for us we could do it in 2018 or we could do it in 2019. But I don’t think much further than that.”

When asked further if the NSE made specific demands about their prospect of listing, he pointed out that “listing on the NSE involves a bunch of rules,” and the decision for them “has been around what are all those rules and regulations and how ready are we to meet all of them”.

He added: “There is no doubt that my ambition is to build one of the biggest travel companies in Africa. And for us to do that, we are going to have to list on an exchange.

“It is a clear and stated goal for us. And the NSE is also interested in having companies like us, which makes the conversation we are having very timely.”

Source: http://news.bounce.ng/Content/bounceexclusive-hotelsng-to-be-listed-on-nigeria-stock-exchange-next-year-20171013

This is a great news. Mark Essien blazing the trail!!!

Okay