Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I started hotels.com.ng feb this year I think and it's already mildly profitable.


Excellent work. I was wondering, do you process payments on behalf of the hotels or do you simply delegate to the hotel? I have seen you have a book room link there and I don't see a payment option. If you don't process, how do hotels confirm that people are actually booking?


Very nice! So your target is an english-speaking person going for a (business) trip to Nigeria?


Target is actually nigerians who need a hotel at some location elsewhere within the country. Internet growth in Africa is off the charts atm...


Glad there are people out there taking advantage of this. How tough was it to acquire that domain?


Very interesting. Do you find it difficult to do business in Nigeria?


You do realize Nigeria IS an English speaking country, don't you?


For very marginal definitions of 'English speaking' only. By any such definition, Germany, all Scandinavian countries, Belgium and the Netherlands would be 'English speaking countries'.


Nigeria is an English-speaking country, the other countries you listed are not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_speaking#List_of_Englis...


Well if we're going to play 'I'm right because Wikipedia says so' games, here's from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria: "English, however, remains an exclusive preserve of the country's urban elite, and is not widely spoken in rural areas. With approximately 75% of Nigeria's populace in the rural areas, the major languages of communication in the country remain national languages".


I'm not playing any Wikipedia games with you, I'm merely stating the facts as they are.

Yes, there are probably over a hundred other languages still spoken today, but the official and most widely spoken language is English. Almost all (if not all) newspapers are in English, national TV stations are in English, the government communicates exclusively in English, and all elementary schools teach English as a core subject.

Some Nigerians are illiterate, of course, and some never attended school. But the majority of the country, I would say over 90%, speaks some form of English. So it's not just the elite that speak English. Now in rural (and even in urban) areas you will find people that can only communicate in broken English, but broken English is still English.


So you mean to say he's missing all these non-english speaking farmers from rural areas surfing the net looking for a hotel ?! C'mon, we all know what English speaking country means, it's official language there, just the same as in India (which also has a lot of other, local languages in use). People using Internet for sure know how to speak English, so this whole discussion is pointless.


How'd you register the .ng domain? Is it possible to get a straight .ng domain with out the '.com'? All the sites that offer .ng seem very sketchy and I'm skeptical of trying.


101domain.com offers it (along with practically every TLD): http://www.101domain.com/ng.htm


Actually it's this: http://www.101domain.com/com_ng.htm

Like KingOfB, I wonder why "domain.ng" costs $50,000/year!

Edit: Apparently, they're banking on the extension being attractive for things like "im.facebooki.ng". Hmmm.

http://www.loyokezie.com/2011/01/05/at-50000-will-the-ng-cct...


Nah, they just want Microsoft to buy bi.ng ;)


Yea, at 50k a year! Maybe that's just the market, but seems a bit high ;0


.ng = Nigeria


This is really well done, Mark. Good luck!




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: