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The Story Of The ANIMASHAUN Sisters
Ever heard of the ‘Luxury Shortlets Abuja’? Well if you haven’t, right now in the FCT, 2 ladies are making the headlines in a market where men seldom dare . This is the story of the Animashaun sisters, Bisola and Bukola.
In the property and hospitality sector presently,they both call the shots and bigtime too so much so they have earned the sobriquet- Queens of Abuja Shortlets. The story of the Animashaun sisters is not one of the bed of roses narrative but one of vision , tenacity and belief.
From Two Beds to Two Hundred Keys,to a thousand across Lagos and Abuja and still counting ,the sisters have emerged from the trenches to claim the number one spot in the shortlet hospitality sector.
Bisola and Bukola didn’t start with marble floors and smart locks.
Bisola is the extrovert, negotiator, who could talk a Landlord down from 5M to 3.5M in 10 minutes. She handles guests, branding, and Instagram.
Bukola, who handles the Lagos end, is also a major brain. Introvert and systems person.
The business -wise sisters knew exactly the missing links in Abuja shortlets puzzle.For instance ,while other shortlets were giving “generator noise and cold water”, the twins created strong rules:
24/7 Light: Solar + inverter + backup generator. “No one should sweat in Abuja heat,” Bisola said.
Bisola kept a note of every returning guest.
Security is key to their operation, Biometric doors, estate security briefed, and personal number for emergencies.
With all these in place, word spread. CEOs doing 3-day meetings, couples on short vacation, diaspora people who were tired of the Abuja expensive hotels became instant customers.
But how did the story of these two interesting sisters evolve?
Before Bisola Animashaun was managing one of the largest shortlet portfolios in Nigeria, she was delivering cooking gas.
She started Gasurgently at 21. The idea was simple enough, cooking gas delivered to your doorstep in Abuja, but the business punished her. Logistics costs kept eating the margins, and after 3 years of fighting for every single delivery, she took a decision most entrepreneurs never talk about publicly. She shut it down.
“People think the story starts when things work. Mine started when they didn’t,” “Gasurgently taught me operations, customer service, how to survive when nothing is going your way. I didn’t know it at the time but I was in training.” she said recently.
Today, Bisola and her sister, Bukola run Luxury Shortlets Abuja, with more than 1,000 apartments across Abuja and Lagos. The company has hosted over 10,000 guests, most of them starting from an Instagram DM or a visit to its website, luxuryshortlets.com.
Perhaps remarkable is that the outfit marked its 5th anniversary this July. In 5 years, the sisters have not taken a single kobo of outside investment.And this is because the structure of the business is unusual. It simply funds itself.
The sisters are 50-50 shareholders and they say that arrangement is the reason the company moves quickly.
“There’s no boardroom politics when it’s your sister. We disagree, we settle it, we move,” Bisola said. “Decisions that take other companies a month take us a phone call.”
In an industry where trust is scarce, the family setup has turned out to be more than a nice detail. Guests worry about fake listings. Property owners worry about damage and unpaid money. A business run by two sisters with a 5-year track record has become Luxury Shortlets’ strongest selling point.
Young professionals, diaspora visitors and business travellers who want furnished apartments with privacy and flexibility are its clients.
Landlords, for their part, discovered a well-run shortlet could earn far more than a traditional lease.
Luxury Shortlets fits that bill. The company verifies every property in its portfolio, vets guests, and has built its Instagram to a level that now handles thousands of enquiries every month across two cities, alongside listings on luxuryshortlets.com.
Both cities stay busy all year round. But from October, which is the Ember months, Lagos enters a different gear entirely, and by the December festive season, demand can multiply as much as tenfold. A standard two-bedroom that goes for around N150,000 a night, or N250,000 and above at the luxury end, can climb to N750,000 and even N1 million a night in prime areas like Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Lekki Phase 1. Prime apartments get booked as much as two months in advance, and in December many owners insist on stays of two weeks to a full month.
“December Lagos is its own economy, “If you’re calling us in November for a December apartment, you’re already late.” Bisola said.
“We treat a N50,000-a-night booking with the same seriousness a hotel treats a corporate account.” That’s the whole secret. It’s not glamorous. It’s consistency”. Bisola added.
The Animashaun Rule most people don’t know is:Make people feel like the city belongs to them, even if it’s just for 3 nights !
Wole Alakija
08055001823
