In years to come, Souadou Niang envisions a continent where chains of luxury boutique hotels like The Palms are the norm and not an exception. For now, AMAKA caught up with her in Dakar, and she shares her entrepreneurial journey, the challenges of being a hotelier particularly in a pandemic, and her plans for the future.

In 2017, nine years after first drawing up a business plan for what would become The Palms, Souadou Niang remodelled the apartment that previously occupied the spot that’s now home to the stunning space along Les Almadies in Dakar. The Palms Luxury Boutique Hotel attracts business travellers from all over the world for a variety of commercial and economic purposes. As the year winds down and businesses close for the Christmas holiday, Niang and her team, predominantly women, are looking forward to taking stock and preparing to go again next year. 

AMAKA Studio: Your story of rising through the ranks at the Ritz is inspirational and fascinating. What are some of the lessons you learned during the years you worked at the Ritz, which you have been able to implement as an entrepreneur and transplant to The Palms as its founder?

Souadou Niang: I was a student in the US back in 1994. When I arrived, I worked in a shoe store in SoHo for four years then moved to Washington, got married and started working at the Ritz Carlton while building a new family. One year later, I had a baby girl, two years after, another baby girl, so I was juggling all of that, while going to school [to obtain a degree in hospitality management]. At the Ritz Carlton, your first 90 days of training will involve working with every department in the hotel. The training was hard. The focus is on the love of the job, your passion, your purpose. Why do you get up every day to spend time with your co-workers? They really brainwash you so you’re not Souadou anymore, you're Ritz once you set your foot inside that building. You don’t realise how much you’ve changed until your family starts telling you, ‘you don’t have to say, my pleasure at home.’ I found that it was great training. I saw that people appreciated my etiquette, my level of service, how I behaved everyday was the Ritz Carlton way without me noticing. When I was in retail (after my time at Ritz, I moved to Miami with my family and I worked for Ralph Lauren Purple Label in Bal Harbour) the level of service was the same as the Ritz.

I wanted to bring all of this back home because we needed that level of service in those entities. We are very polite and respectful in our homes but when you take it outside, in rendering service, I feel like the French influence in West Africa is very prevalent. Customer service is the least of their worries and you can see it when you travel through Europe but now they are coming into the understanding that customer service and loyalty is everything in the hospitality business. When I came back to Senegal, I said, I have to show how to truly cater to people. If they leave all the stores and hotels and come to you, you have to make their experience lovely. 

A luxury hotel is a capital intensive venture. How did you go about financing The Palms?

I wrote my business plan in 2008 and I was only able to get financing in 2017. I knocked at different banks. They said, “You’re just coming back home, you have no assets, you have no guarantees.” It took a while to find a bank that was willing to listen to me. I understand my application had been sitting on a desk at the risk department because some members of the team were not convinced to go ahead with the loan even though the business plan showed I had the right clientele and demand to repay the loan in record time. I asked for an appointment with the risk department. 

The hotel was going to be in the best area in Dakar with the best clientele and a contract that ensured rooms in the hotel will be booked for the next four years and they thought it was too risky [to give the loan]? I remember thinking, “How are you reading the page, upside down?” You can have rules and regulations but sometimes it pays to think outside the box and see what makes sense. I had this company [that would be] mining gold here for the next 12 years and their office is a walking distance from where the hotel would be. And they said if I completed this project, they’d move their guests to the hotel for the duration of their stay. I showed the bank how much they pay Radisson Blu every year to house their guests [as I was consulting for them in that regard] and that all of this would be coming to me if the project were to be completed and they’re saying no? 

They made the appointment that I come and plead my cause. I came in and it was a room full of [mostly young] guys, no woman, of course. One of them was the boss for all of the West African region who was in town and happened to be sitting in that meeting. I did my presentation and they were still insistent on risks and I said to them, take a step outside of what you were taught and look at what is concrete; see all the millions I give to Radisson every year, they will become my millions if I build within a year. The West Africa boss asked, “where is this place?'' We went to the house and he saw all the investments that had already gone into the project even without a bank loan, he toured the area and there was the US Embassy, the United Nations, everybody on the same road. He said he saw fire in me when I talked and it was because I was already inside the hotel in my head and I pleaded with him to make an exception here. He promised to speak to his team and a couple of days later, I got called to say the contract has been signed and here we are. I’ve never missed a payment. 

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It does appear that you had most things figured out from the get-go; training process from your experience in the US, and a long-term clientele to begin with. Asides funding, what else has been challenging in your experience in the hospitality business so far?

Truly, things were going very well until COVID hit. Asides this, the challenges have been normal because I have the same people on the roll, training is still going on and I never stop training. My hotel is truly a business hotel. It’s business travellers who stay here. When the seminars and conferences moved to Zoom, I was closed for almost a year! And it was very tough because I had to keep my employees, pay them, while taking care of the hotel because we’re close to the beach. My focus, however, was really to keep my employees paid because in Dakar, one salary has 60+ people waiting on it. I know where their salary goes, each of them. I could not sit and not take care of them. And that’s what I did. 

I’ve been full since Senegal reopened its borders but before that, it was just quiet. This morning, we were having a meeting about the Omicron variant because when the Delta variant first came to light, we had a lot of cancellations. So far there’s been none. Up until mid-December, we are still full. Usually, every year starting December 15, I’m not full because business travellers are going home to their families for Christmas. We don’t know what will happen in the next couple of days. We’re waiting to see.

In what ways are your experiences as a female hotel owner in Dakar unique or not?

Anything retail or hospitality in Dakar is hardly owned by a Senegalese. It’s a Lebanese market, Lebanese who are born here. I can say I’m one of the firsts Senegalese with no Lebanese backing to run a business in the industry. For almost a year, people thought The Palms was owned by a Lebanese. People are amazed at what I’ve done at The Palms and I’m proud of it. I raised the bar and today, I’m seeing more diaspora Senegalese coming back to build similar businesses that are comparable in standards. 

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Why was it important to you that a large percentage of your workforce are women?

When I arrived back home, I saw that a lot of girls were not working and depending on a future husband or a boyfriend or something to cater for their expenses and I started asking why. Many of them don’t finish school and they don’t because the parents cannot afford it or they marry early. But that’s not the end of it and many women are of the opinion that without a degree or high school education, they cannot work. Senegal is a tourism country and in the industry, there’s space for people who didn’t finish college to work and be successful. When I wrote my business plan, I wasn’t looking for someone with a degree, I was looking for someone who will take my training. 

What does the future look like?

If we can allow other brands to come into Africa building, training and having their labels all over Africa, why can’t we transport what we have as well? Senegal itself has so much demand for hotels and we don’t have enough of that here let alone the continent. It’s time for a label that’s recognised worldwide and can be implemented in any other country or continent just like Radisson Blu. Why can’t we transport small boutique hotels because, security wise, boutique hotels are the first choice now anyway. Clients are more inclined to go to small boutique hotels since attacks like in Bamako. 

There were a lot of opportunities before COVID, people were calling to see how to replicate my model in Abidjan, Mali, Kinshasa, the list is long. I’m still in conversation with a few of them but COVID has stopped a lot of those talks. We are watching where the world is going now in my industry. But, yes, it’s doable.