HOJ Travels & Tours Limited, one of Nigeria’s distinguished travel and tour companies, has been recognized among the Africa Travel 100 Top Tour Operators, celebrating its contribution to the advancement of tourism in Nigeria and across the African travel landscape.
Founder and Experience Curator of HOJ Travels & Tours Ltd, Joan Benjamin Ulaeto is a tourism professional, tour operator, destination management and marketing expert, MICE expert, experience curator, and advocate for tourism development in Nigeria and beyond.
With over a decade of industry experience, she creates meaningful travel experiences, promotes destinations, connects cultures, and positions tourism as a driver of economic development, cultural exchange and peace.
HOJ Travels & Tours Ltd, develops bespoke experiences for individuals, families, corporate organisations, groups, and international visitors. Her work combines curated itineraries, hospitality, culture, and authentic local experiences.
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Joan’s expertise includes tour operations, destination management and promotion, leisure and group travel, corporate travel, MICE, travel consultancy, and experiential tourism. She also has experience coordinating international visitors to Nigeria and showcasing the country’s culture, heritage, hospitality, and tourism potential.
She currently serves as Deputy Secretary-General of the Nigeria Association of Tour Operators (NATOP) and is an award-winning tourism professional. As a Peace Ambassador, she promotes tourism as a means of fostering cultural understanding, dialogue, connection, and peaceful coexistence.
She believes travel should create value beyond transportation and accommodation. In the corporate space, travel can open doors to new markets, inspire innovation, strengthen relationships, build knowledge, and create opportunities. In leisure, travel offers the opportunity to discover, connect, reflect, and experience life beyond familiar boundaries.
For Joan, destination marketing goes beyond promoting a place. She believes every destination has something uniquely appealing, something capable of inspiring curiosity and expanding human understanding.
She believes every human being should travel — to learn, to unlearn, to experience different cultures and perspectives, and ultimately to become the best version of themselves and the best at what they do.
This philosophy shapes the way she curates experiences and promotes destinations. Her goal is not simply to encourage people to visit a destination, but to create journeys that leave them with new perspectives, meaningful connections and lasting memories.
Before focusing fully on tourism, Joan spent approximately a decade in interior design and creative space transformation. Her background also includes real estate, giving her a multidisciplinary perspective on hospitality, lifestyle, property, aesthetics, and destination development.
This unique combination of tourism, real estate and interior design allows Joan to see destinations and experiences from multiple perspectives — not simply as places to visit, but as environments to experience, invest in, connect with and remember.
Joan is committed to strategically presenting Nigeria’s destinations, stories, cultures, and experiences to the world while contributing to the development of a stronger and more sustainable tourism ecosystem.
Her vision is for destinations to be not only visited, but experienced, remembered, understood, and continually promoted.
