At Hotel Expo Nigeria 2026, Fortune Okeke, Founder and CEO of HomeFairyTech, challenged hospitality professionals to look beyond the question of whether Nigeria has enough accommodation inventory and instead consider how easily that inventory can be accessed by the people driving bookings.
Speaking to hospitality businesses, booking agents and industry professionals at the Landmark Event Centre in Lagos, Fortune focused his address on a problem that many booking professionals encounter daily: the difficulty of finding the right property for a client despite the availability of hotels, resorts, shortlets and other hospitality businesses across the country.
“How many of you have ever had to make five, ten, maybe even fifteen calls just to find the right accommodation for a client?” he asked the audience.
For booking agents, the process can involve multiple phone calls, WhatsApp conversations and referrals before a suitable property is found.
According to Fortune Okeke, this highlights a wider structural issue within the industry.
“There are hotels with empty rooms. There are resorts with available inventory. There are shortlets ready to take bookings. And at the same time, there are booking agents looking for exactly these things for their clients,” he said.
“So the inventory is there. The agents are there. Why is it still so difficult for them to find each other?”
For Fortune Okeke, that question is at the heart of why he founded HomeFairyTech.
From inventory to access
Fortune Okeke argued that the challenge facing hospitality businesses is not necessarily a lack of inventory, but the difficulty of getting that inventory in front of the right booking professionals.
Much of the connection between hospitality businesses and booking agents still happens through personal relationships, referrals, phone contacts and WhatsApp groups.
While these networks remain important to the industry, he believes they can also create unnecessary friction.
A booking agent may have a client looking for a particular type of property, location or budget, while a suitable hotel or shortlet may have availability but remain outside the agent’s existing network.
The result is a disconnect between available inventory and potential demand.
“Businesses are there. Booking agents are there. But the connection between them is still largely based on personal contacts, referrals, WhatsApp groups, and who happens to know who,” Fortune explained.
“That creates unnecessary friction.”
Building around the people who drive bookings
It is this gap that HomeFairyTech is designed to address.
The platform connects hospitality businesses with booking agents, giving agents access to a broader pool of properties while creating another channel through which hospitality businesses can reach professionals who are actively sourcing accommodation for clients.
Fortune Okeke was deliberate in distinguishing the platform from traditional consumer-facing accommodation marketplaces.
“HomeFairyTech is not another guest booking platform,” he said.
“Our focus is the people who are already driving bookings; the agents.”
The distinction reflects a broader view of how accommodation bookings are generated in Nigeria, where booking professionals and informal referral networks continue to play a significant role in connecting customers with hospitality businesses.
For property owners and operators, the proposition is about expanding access to booking professionals beyond the agents already in their contact lists.
For agents, it is about having more inventory to work with when responding to client requests.
Today, the network is already beginning to reflect that model. HomeFairyTech has hospitality businesses such as Lagos Oriental Hotel, Federal Palace Hotel & Casino, Black Diamond Hotel, Kalakuta Museum and many more on its platform, giving booking professionals access to established hospitality properties alongside other listed inventory.
On the demand side, more than 2,000 booking agents are actively searching for hospitality inventory through the growing HomeFairyTech network.
That combination; hospitality businesses with inventory and booking professionals actively looking for properties; is central to the platform’s proposition.
More than putting properties online
For Okeke, the objective is not simply to create another directory of hotels and shortlets.
The larger ambition is to create an additional distribution channel for hospitality inventory.
“A hospitality business has inventory. A booking agent has clients looking for accommodation. We bring them together,” he said.
That relationship sits at the centre of HomeFairyTech’s model.
For hospitality businesses, the opportunity is to make their inventory accessible to a wider network of booking professionals.
For agents, it creates an avenue to discover properties beyond the businesses already stored in their phones or available through their personal networks.
The platform also incorporates a commission structure for agents, allowing them to earn from successful bookings made through the platform.
This creates a model where the interests of both sides are connected: hospitality businesses gain another route to potential bookings, while agents gain access to more properties they can offer to their clients.
A wider question for Nigeria’s hospitality industry
Beyond HomeFairyTech, Fortune Okeke’s speech points to a broader conversation about the role of technology in Nigeria’s hospitality sector.
As the number of hotels, shortlets, resorts and other hospitality businesses continues to grow, the challenge is increasingly not only about creating more inventory, but also about making existing inventory easier to discover, access and book safely.
For Fortune Okeke, technology can play a role in creating that connection.
“If you’re a hotel, resort, shortlet, villa or any other hospitality business, your next booking agent could be someone you’ve never met,” he told the audience.
“And if you’re a booking agent, your next great hospitality partner could be a business you’ve never worked with.”
That idea was central to his Hotel Expo presentation: creating a more structured connection between two sides of an industry that already depend on each other.
From conversation to action
Hotel Expo Nigeria 2026 provided an opportunity for Fortune Okeke and the HomeFairyTech team to take that conversation beyond the stage.
Across the two-day exhibition, hospitality professionals, operators, partners and booking agents visited the HomeFairyTech booth to learn about the platform, discuss potential partnerships and explore how the technology could fit into existing hospitality businesses.
The conversations reinforced the importance of building technology around real industry workflows rather than simply introducing another digital product.
“The platform is built. The network is growing. And now we need the industry to connect,” he said in his closing remarks.
“We’ve built the platform. Now let’s connect the industry.”
His message at Hotel Expo was therefore less about replacing the relationships that already power Nigeria’s hospitality sector and more about giving those relationships a broader, more structured digital layer.
As HomeFairyTech continues to build its network of hospitality businesses and booking agents, Fortune Okeke’s central proposition remains straightforward: the inventory exists, the agents exist, and technology can help make the connection between them easier.
Learn more about HomeFairyTech at homefairytech.com.
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