Our Story
Redefining how the world stays in Africa.
CheckinBliss is not a listings site. It is a deliberately small collection of apartments in Lagos and Abuja, most homes we see are turned away chosen for the African diaspora and for anyone who wants to arrive somewhere real, somewhere worthy of the journey.
Every home is visited in person before it appears here. Every price is quoted honestly, in the currency you hold. And someone is always on the ground because a stay is only as good as the people standing behind it.
Why?
Coming home should be the easy part.
For too many of us, it isn’t. Booking a place to stay from abroad means trusting reviews written by strangers, on platforms where hotels and apartments blur together, then messaging an owner directly and wiring money in hope hope that the apartment is real, that the price is fair, that the booking will be honoured at all.
On Instagram it is worse. Agents sell the same apartment at inflated prices, and at the far end of it sits the returnee who paid an imposter for a home that was never theirs to let.
So we fall back on family and friends to go and look at a property before we dare to pay. That is not a booking process. It is a workaround for a market that never got built properly.
The African home, finally held to a standard.
There has never been a standard for the private home. No stars, no grading, no mark that tells you what you are really walking into. So a stay has always been a gamble, dressed up in good photos.
We are setting that standard in Africa, and refusing every home that doesn’t meet it.
Founder’s Story
It started with a homecoming.
2025 — the first trip back.
After years in the UK, our founder Curtis Ogbuaku returned home for the first time in a long while. Before he had even secured an apartment, the problem was impossible to miss. The market was fragmented. On Booking.com, hotels and short-lets sat side by side, and you were left to rely on the word of strangers. Even then, securing a place meant chatting directly with an owner, wiring money across borders, and simply hoping they would honour the booking.
The same everywhere he looked.
Airbnb was no different. The Instagram agents were worse — the same apartment advertised at inflated prices by several people at once, and, at the very worst, money sent to an imposter for a home that was never theirs to let. The booking that was never honoured is not a rare horror story. For people coming home, it is a quiet, constant fear.
A workaround, not a system.
So we do what returnees have always done: we call family, we call friends, we ask someone to go and stand inside the property before we dare to pay. Curtis kept asking himself a simple question. Why should coming home be this difficult, this stressful? Why should a homecoming begin with a leap of faith?
He wasn’t alone.
He began asking other travellers, other returnees, and the answer came back the same every time. His experience was not an exception. It was the norm a shared frustration, quietly carried by an entire diaspora, that no one had thought to fix properly.
So we built it.
The question became a purpose: could this process be made seamless, honest, and genuinely beautiful for a returnee, or for anyone visiting Africa? Could arriving somewhere finally feel like the reward it should be, rather than the risk it had become?
That question is CheckinBliss. Most homes turned away. Every apartment seen in person. Every price honest. Someone always on the ground. A homecoming worthy of the name.
“Coming home should not require a leap of faith. We are building the platform I wished existed the day I landed.”
The CheckinBliss Promise
Most homes never make it
We turn away nine in ten. No home reaches this collection from a photograph and a phone call our city manager stands in the room, measures it against our standard, and only the exceptional goes live.
The price is the price
No inflated agent markup. Prices display in your currency for convenience and are charged in GBP; your bank sets the final conversion.
Someone is on the ground
A person in Lagos or Abuja, reachable before, during, and after your stay. If something is wrong, you raise it with us and we put it right.
The Team
A small team, building something that has to be trusted.
Curtis Ogbuaku
Curtis has shuttled between Lagos and Scotland, long enough to feel the gap every diaspora traveller knows. He built CheckinBliss because coming home to Africa deserved better. Outside the work, he reads widely on cities and architecture, follows football closely, and spends time with family on both continents whenever the calendar allows.
Charles Ugonwa
Charles leads CheckinBliss operations across our cities. Widely travelled, he has seen luxury hospitality expressed in markets around the world, and brings that eye for detail and refined taste to every property we accept. Lagos-born, globally informed, he knows what premium guests expect, and how to deliver it.
Oladimeji Suraju
[Placeholder biography.] Background in product and design, what they are building toward, and why the CheckinBliss experience should feel as considered as the apartments themselves. Two to four sentences.