Nigeria’s first over water resort, Ziba Beach Resort has been unveiled in Lagos on Thursday.
Speaking during the unveiling ceremony in Lagos, Dr Olufemi Olumide, Chief Executive Officer of the Beach Resort, described the leisure centre as a place of comfort and peace.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Ziba Beach Resort is located at Okun-Ajah, Lagos Island.
Olumide said it was specially designed to suite Nigerians who were in the habit of travelling abroad for the purpose of leisure as the beach resort offered top quality service as obtainable across the globe.
According to him, the facility accommodates 17 rooms of nine beach facing rooms and eight over water rooms, a beach spa, games room for adults, playground for kids, several swimming pools, indoor cinema, conference rooms and others.
He said that visitors could also have access to child minding services, a fire pit, horse riding and lots more services that could guarantee visitors’ comfort.
“We began the construction of this place 14 months ago, we are happy that we arrived at this point. It has been a beautiful journey of struggles and joy.
” Building in Nigeria entails a whole lot of challenges but regardless, we are here.
” We just want to make a statement that it is possible to bring the excitement and memorable experiences to be enjoyed in other world class resorts across the globe to Nigeria as well.
” We will ensure we adopt continuous improvement on the facility,” he said.
Olumide added that visitors ought not panic over security around the resort .
Also speaking, Dr Tricia Olufemi-Olumide, Managing Director of the beach said that the idea of coming up with an over water beach resort occurred to her eight years ago.
Olufemi-Olumide said haven visited lots of beach resorts across the globe including the exotic ones in Maldives, she came to the realisation that most beach resorts operated in Nigeria were mere beach houses.
She said that the entire idea was to create a place worthy of the name “Beach Resort” in Nigeria, a nation with breath-taking coastal area.
She said the emergence of Ziba beach resort was meant to upscale leisure and holiday lifestyle experiences while contributing to the growth of nation’s tourism industry.
“We conceived Ziba out of the deep desire to enable Nigerians experience premium holiday lifestyle without traveling out of the country and to contribute our quota to the Nigerian tourism industry.
“We have invested a lot in the water system here, as a way to improve on the quality and neatness.
Also, we have invested a lot in internet connections to ensure visitors gain access to wifi wherever they are within the premises,” she said.
According to her, the services of professional hospitality consultants have been engaged to keep the members of staff busy with the process of training and retraining.
She said this was considered neccessary as the quality of service delivery would be continously upscaled.
She explained that the staff had been engaged to work at the resort due to their reasonable years of experience from renowned hotels within the nation. She said Ziba beach resort was designed to service the physically impaired, the aged and babies with the availability of wheelchair ramps and other facilities.