**Solving the Puzzle of Corporate Travel in Nigeria** Imagine being a manager at a large Nigerian company, with hundreds of employees scattered across the country. Every time an employee needs to travel for work, it's like herding cats - multiple approvals, endless emails, and a maze of internal policies that seem to change every week. This is the reality many large companies face, and it's a problem that Mark Essien, founder of Hotels.ng, has been trying to solve for years. Mark's journey began in 2012, when he launched Hotels.ng, an online hotel booking platform that made it easy for Nigerians to find and book rooms. But as he spoke to large corporate clients, he realized that the problem of enterprise travel was far more complex. These companies had internal approval processes that made simple tasks like booking a hotel room feel like climbing Mount Everest. It took years of conversations with clients for Mark to understand the true nature of the problem. They didn't just need a better booking platform; they needed a system that could adapt to their unique constraints and approval processes. This insight led to the creation of TripDesk, an AI-driven enterprise travel platform that's designed for large companies in sectors like banking, telecoms, and FMCG. **Streamlining Corporate Travel** Corporate travel is a significant expense for many Nigerian companies. According to the Global Business Travel Association, business travel spending in Africa recovered to 111% of the 2019 level in 2025, with global spending projected to reach $1.57 trillion. But while travel is embedded in large companies, booking a hotel room is just one step in a longer administrative process. Before a trip is confirmed, requests often pass through multiple layers of internal approvals, including line managers, department heads, and finance teams. These approval processes are usually scattered across PDFs and HR manuals, making it difficult for managers to keep track of every step. This is where TripDesk comes in. It's an approval system built specifically for corporate travel, with each company maintaining its own ecosystem. Employees enter travel details such as destination, duration, and estimated costs, and the system routes the request through the appropriate approval chain. Managers receive the request via email or on their TripDesk dashboard, along with a summary of whether it falls within company travel policies. **Simplifying Corporate Travel in Nigeria** TripDesk is more than just a travel platform - it's a solution to the complex problem of enterprise travel. By streamlining the approval process