Cutting costs sustains Wanyama’s business

For Ms Jennifer Magombe Wanyama, the proprietor of the gushing Crown suites hotel located in Mbale Senior quarters, market research is an essential element before starting up a business. It was through this that she decided to open up a hotel and abandon all other business prospects. She said since market for hotels in Mbale was untapped, she discovered readily available opportunities in the sector which compelled her to invest.

Ms Jennifer who started her business with only Shs10m in 2011, has now seen it grow to Shs3b in a spun of only six years.
Management came easy for the 62-year-old mother of five, who has a background in entrepreneurship at Makerere University Businesses School in Nakawa and work experience at Stanbic Bank. She manages her hotel with the help of 21 employees.

Clients
Being in the rural areas, the hotel mainly dines and houses urban people. She revealed that people living in rural areas do not use hotels, leaving the hotel occupied by conferences from Non-Government Organisation (NGO) holding engagements in the region.
“Most of our customers are from urban areas because rural people hardly use hotel services. We get most of the bookings for conferences from Kampala and Jinja for those organisations that have activities and branches in Mbale. Most of them are men and women from NGOs,” she said.
While women are always afraid of balancing work and family, Ms Wanyama took it on and never looked back. She raised her four boys and girl to adulthood to the point that they do not need her attention anymore. They are all grown.

The hotel is now a family business with efforts from the family to make it prosper. The hotel equally thrives on the hardwork of Ms Wanyama, beating out competition which she attributes to the ambiance of the premises attracting many customers and trained staff who give guests the best service.
Being a hotel, she said food and bedrooms are paramount to the attitude built in customers, and it is because of that that she maintains exquisite food with comfortable and clean resting rooms.
“Our rooms and public places are very clean. Our food is natural, fresh and prepared to the test of our guests,” she said.

Challenges
However, she decried delayed payments from clients, heavy taxes and high cost of living and inflation due to augmentation of prices of goods used as inputs for the hotel. This nonetheless did not breakdown Ms Wanyama’s spirit as she determined the best way to counter these challenges.
The businesswoman put created policies to maintain a good working environment for the people while remaining profitable. She believes in doing her best to please the customers to enable them come back for services.

“By minimising costs as much as possible, marketing our services and treating our clients as our bosses, we have managed to remain relevant in business,” she said.
Expressing fondness for her home, she recognised there are more activities in towns than in rural areas since organisations operate from the towns, but maintains Mbale is convenient for her retirement.