Investing in Event halls

Posted by Felix Okoli on Tuesday October 2, 2012 at 13:1:0:

In Nigeria, the population only keeps increasing especially in urgan areas like Lagos, Kano and Abuja. People are also beginning to migrate to rural areas which are receiving their own breath of urbanization. People are born, get married, die and according to Nigerian custom, it is only proper to celebrate all these occasions.

There is an increasing number of Event centers or halls springing up in Lagos and these people tend to make more money from their small investments than landlord make from their tenants. Well they are landlords in their own right since they rent out their halls to tenants holding a single day event but for hug amounts of money.

Nowadays, event hall business is booming and because there is money in the system, people are willing to pay as high as N1.5m($10,000) for a single day event and it's mostly for wedding receptions. Actually there is really no specific rates for renting an event hall as price varies from location to location and based on availability of utilities like parking space, air conditioning, carpet floors, security, generator, toilets and bathrooms and so on. I think the cheapest I've heard of so far is at around N70,000 for a hall at Alaba, Lagos. In places like Lagos Mainland, booking for event halls go for around N500,000 to N700,000($3500 - $4500). Now this is about 2 to 3 years house rent which a landlord would normally collect. So I'm not really sure who makes the most money between the Event hall owners and home owners.

Things needed to invest in event hall business
In order to start this sort of business, you really first of all need the following:

- Land
- Building construction. Should be vertically and horizontally spacious
- Government permit. Local and town planning.
- Capital: About N5m excluding land.

Of course, you would also need to employ some staff, declare your income and pay taxes when due.

Receiving bookings
==================
Once you've officially opened, you would also need to have an office at your outlet to accept bookings in advance. There are a large number of activities going on in the city and hall bookings rates tend to rise during peak periods.
You can accept payments by bank deposits, cheques or POS machines. You should then keep proper records of bookings made by clients an make sure to deliver.