Nigeria's hotel booking and research site, Hotels.ng, has secured $1.2 million in investment to further its technology capacity and expand its services across the continent.

In a statement it was revealed that the funding from international investors EchoVC Pan-Africa Fund, a seed-stage technology fund, and Omidyar Network, the investment vehicle of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar follows on from the company’s 2013 seed investment of $225,000 from Lagos­based Spark.ng.

To date Hotels.ng has built its hotel network to cover 7,000 (plus) hotels in 21 regions across Nigeria. The start-up which was launched in 2013 has a team of 34 people and has overseen over one million hotel searches.

Mark Essien, founder and chief executive officer of Hotels.ng said, “We’re forging ahead into relatively uncharted territory; e-commerce in Africa is a massive market to conquer, but there are no hard and fast prototypes from which to follow; we cannot simply replicate Western models here, we have to build our own blueprints from scratch, which takes significant investment, both in terms of time and money."

"This additional capital will allow us to realise the next stage in our ambitious growth plans, which will see us consolidate our position as Nigeria’s market leader in online hotel bookings, with a view to expanding our service into other African markets such as Ghana,” said Essien.

Also commenting on the funding Jason Njoku, managing Partner of Spark said, “Mark and his team are the future of Africa’s digital economy; they are hungry for success, innovative in their approach to building their market and rigorous in their business execution. Closing on this funding round is a big win, not only for Hotels.ng, but for all African internet start-ups. It is proof, if any more were needed, that the internet market in Africa is extremely appealing for VCs, more of whom are now looking to create value and build big on the continent.”

“... Our mission was to ‘build local’ as a springboard for international expansion and this has resulted in really encouraging traffic and conversion figures so far. This new investment gives us the confidence and foundation on which to build out our vision for Nigeria’s e-tourism market,” Essien concluded.