Tinapa

I was taken on a tour of Tinapa yesterday by the project manager (he works for Arup). The experience was a little underwhelming - not surprising given that it is merely a large scale business park. There is no 'wow' factor at all. I expected a vantage point over the whole area, but there doesn't seem to be one.

Imagine being taken on a tour of an Amazon logistics warehouse, then photoshop the background with tropical plants, and you get the idea. Talking of Amazon, I mentioned the possibility of it being the ideal base for them to penetrate West Africa. From his response, it seems like it was the first time the idea has ever been mooted. Very strange, given the complete lack of access to books in the sub-region and the size of the untapped market.

Most of the space is devoted to wholesale warehousing (as in the image to the left), with a strip of retail between the huge sheds. The only cover for the retail strip is a row of palm trees - not the best choice for providing shade or shelter, given the hot sticky climate and the very heavy rainfall for several months of the year. I would have covered the retail strip with canvas, or used more shade-providing trees (palms are among the worst - as the City of Los Angeles has just decided). So the entire effect will be less Bluewater (or Sun City, let alone Dubai) and more TNT logistics operation. Architecture there is not.

For launch in March, there will only be one hotel up and running - a 2-star South African chain with only 200 rooms. So the effect (combined with the Casino and fast food joints) will be quite down-market. I might have started with a higher class hotel - as all brand experts know, it is easier to create lower niches for sub-brands, rather than try to raise a sub-brand above the level of the main brand (think Mercedes A class). Still, it is early days for consumerism in Nigeria, and people seem to love downscale brands (Argos and Primark are held in high esteem by many). I'm sure it will be successful, and more than hit the initial target of 10,000 visitors per month.

Given that the focus is on wholesale, it must be a worry that there are not adequate transport links from Calabar in place - apart from a monorail to the airport. The Lagos-Calabar motorway is a distant dream, and the Korean-backed Calabar-Maduguiri railway line has only just been contracted. But it is early days - in ten years time both links will be in place, and there will be at least a couple more higher-standard hotels there. The next big thing will be real estate that lies just outside the park but connects to it. They are guaranteed to be hot items in the next couple of years (you heard it here first!)