Tanzania GET Safaris - Hassle-free booking and travel experience marketplace by Reginald Victor Runyoro
Pitch
redefines the way people travel by inspiring and empowering people to showcase nice travel experiences, while protecting nature and culture.
Description
Summary
Globally, there are more than 155,600 nature protected and forest reserves areas that have been set aside by the local communities living adjacent and within those nature protected areas, forest reserves and cultural/landscape areas. According to Chapel et al. (2008), many nature protected areas, forest reserves and cultural travel destinations in the world have failed to integrate socioeconomic and environmental impacts to local communities which would mutually inspire and empower them to protect nature and culture while generating a competitive sustained economic growth through ecotourism and civic engagement.
About 6.8% of the 15.7% of local community members are local tour guides who claim and complain that the land they have set aside for nature conservation and sustainable tourism does not benefit them significantly socially, economically and environmentally compared to the pace of the increase of wildlife population and the increase inflow of tourists in their areas, as well as the swelling number of tour companies and tour guides from outside their communities (Chapel et al., 2008).
The increase of tourists to overpopulated travel destination is disrupting the traditional ways of life of local communities and limiting the control of natural resources.
Unfortunately, the local tour guides associated this drawbacks with the lack of a digital platform that help local tour guides to showcase their travel experiences and destinations offerings to tourists. No one has yet tried to solve this problem because most of the existing tour companies in Africa aim at profit maximization over nature conservation and strengthening socioeconomic status of the local communities.
Tanzania GET Safaris is expanding access to digital smart travel destinations and experiences that improve the sustainability of destinations and experiences in the economic, environmental, social and cultural fields and where this technology help foster innovation, sustainability and accessibility.
What concrete idea do you propose?
The main purpose of Tanzania GET Safaris is to inspire and empower the community of travelers (tourists, local tour guides, travel agents, local communities and community-based tourism organization) to continue protecting nature and preserving culture to increase their profitability, efficiency and sustainability by promoting environmental conservation education, community engagement, peace and integrity through planning and organizing ecotourism activities and photography to attain social justice.
Tanzania GET Safaris is cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) booking and travel experience marketplace that enables tourist planning to travel to find, compare and book travel experiences and destinations, at a possible cost while connecting the tourist with amazing local tour guides who have the knowledge and experience in travel hospitality, and are committed to protecting nature in sustainable manner.
Tanzania GET Safaris is not only a digital hassle free booking and travel experience marketplace solution, but also a community of travel enthusiasts who redefine the way people should travel by inspiring and empowering people to protect nature and preserve culture while increasing the inflow of tourists to less visited travel destinations to enhance sustained economic growth and reduce inequalities through ecotourism.
Tanzania GET Safaris is a travel marketplace value chain that gives other travel and leisure markets the opportunity to showcase their offerings in order to reduce a lot of commission lost, to increase income and support creative travel destinations and experiences that could reach out to the tourists. The platform enables Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the travel and leisure industry to receive resources such as travel agents, environmental conservation education, climate change mitigation practices and human resources to grow and improve their businesses from our partnership and networks.
Tanzania GET Safaris is a creative technological transformation and digital commerce travel marketplace that is assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to easily and accurate predict the correlation between the tourism factors that cause travel and leisure seasonal demands. In addition, machine learning analyzes past and future tourism trending data through predictive models that are used for predicting the trending tourism prices that helps us with an advantage in the market.
Tanzania GET Safaris is sustainable because it utilizes innovative business revenue generation, and the following are the two revenue stream;Tanzania GET Safaris interact or engage directly with customers who book a travel destination, travel experience and tours on Tanzania GET Safaris platform at no charge. The business model is business-to-business-to-customers; whereby customers do not pay us, but we make money through (i) letting tour operators and travel agents display our tours on their site, and the customers book with us, (ii) Tanzania GET Safaris sell our travel inventory or stock to tour operators and travel agents at a wholesale price and then they resell the stock to the customers.
Who will take these actions?
Tanzania GET Safaris has 4 phases in the action plan;
Phase 1: Upgrade Tanzania GET Safaris webpage application.
Upgrading the webpage platform help to make it more easier and precise for the customers to utilize the platform in order to increase customer satisfaction and retention to grasp 12% of tourism marketplace by the years 2025. Tanzania GET Safaris webpage application has the following functionalities;
(a) upload the customers data into the operations system.
(b) upload local tour guides data into the operations system
(c) The utilization of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning to assist Tanzania GET Safaris in customer service and engagement including recommender system, prediction on travel deals and chatbots.
(c) an automated SMS notification alert sent to tourists and local tour guides.
Phase 2: Community Engagement
Tanzania GET Safaris will organize community seminars and forums to the surrounding local communities especially local tour guides living around the nature protected areas to participate in the action plan in order to build sustainable customer retention and satisfaction.
Phase 4: Branding & Marketing
Tanzania GET Safaris need to brand itself as a way to make marketing easier and reliable for the customers in order to grow the business to different regions of the world.
Phase 5: Performance evaluation
After two (2) years, Tanzania GET Safaris will measure the progress and growth of the business by assessing the travel destinations, customer recommendation and employees happiness, and possible the development of a mobile application for the customers.
The following are the key actors involved in taking the above actions;
Local Tour Guides
This platform offers the local tour guides with the opportunity to present their knowledge and experience to tourists while protecting nature and strengthening their socioeconomic status through organizing ecotourism activities.
Community Based Tourism Organizations
Community-based ecotourism enterprises are under pressure because they lack inflow of tourists planning to visit their smart travel destination areas which includes natural and cultural heritages and geological landscapes. Tanzania GET Safaris will get more local tour guides to join the platform from community-based ecotourism enterprises and services
International and National Travel Agents
They provide lower-cost travel options to tourists, while providing the freedom for tourists to plan and reserve when they choose travel destinations and experiences to be organized local tour guides.
Local Tour Operators
They make financial contributions to wildlife conservation and social development projects that foster empowerment and promote rural development.
Internet Service Provider
This travel and leisure behaviorial consumption is highly dependent on the easy and reliable access to equal supply of internet to customers and stakeholders It will to act an intermediary between the computer system and internet.
Impact/Benefits
What impact will these actions have on sustainability within Travel & Mobility?
Tanzania GET Safaris will have the following impacts;
(a) Ecotourism as a form of education and environmental awareness
Unlike the existing travel and leisure enterprises who promote busy travel destinations and experiences Tanzania GET Safaris focus on promoting less visited travel destinations and experiences to reduce overpopulation in travel destinations while enabling tourists to engage and learn more from local tour guide knowledge and experience. As suggested by Daniel T. Bleheim (2017), ecotourism assist both tourists and local communities to understand how ecotourism improves awareness and contribution towards natural biodiversity conservation
(b) Ecotourism as Social tool for civic engagement and development
Tanzania GET Safaris strengthen the bond between the community of travelers including tourist, local tour guide, tour operators etc.). This platform connect tourists with the local tour guides to travel, enjoy and respect smart nature and cultural travel destinations that allows social bonding and rural development.
(c) Ecotourism as a form of economic benefit to the local tour guides
We believe that the use of ecotourism assist to flourish wildlife biodiversity hot spots from the profits accumulated from wildlife park fees and ecotourism activities while fostering rural development.
Local tour guides have a great chance of accumulating economic gains from organizing travel experiences that offer the tourist with accurate information on nature conservation, cultural preservation and rural development.
Tanzania GET Safaris has the potential to create alternative livelihoods for the local communities, and by connecting the local tour guides with tourists, it presents an opportunity for the local tour guides to support themselves and their families.
Basically, Tanzania GET Safaris will provide income incentives to local tour guides to raise awareness to school children about environmental conservation and climate change and foster cultural preservation as a tourism asset.
(d) Tanzania GET Safaris as an electronic commerce in the travel and leisure market
The business model for Tanzania GET Safaris is Business-to-Business-to-Customers that assist the tourist to reduce the hassles of searching for travel destinations and travel experiences.
Tanzania GET Safaris is a perfect solution for travel and leisure market to showcase their offers on the platform. Basically, this is a business-to-business (B2B) relation and interaction that narrow the intermediation gap that exists with the sustainability of travel experience.
About the team members
- Reginald Victor Runyoro - Co,founder & Managing Director
Reginald is a visionary leader and serial entrepreneur, who has over 7 years of experience in community engagement, social entrepreneurship and sustainable tourism. He works at Tanzania GET Safaris as the Managing Director, where he is responsible for ensuring the operations and marketing base of the enterprise are going smoothly while creating potential partnerships and networks with international and national tourism organizations.
- Goodluck Tesha - Co, founder & Head of Designs
He works at Tanzania GET Safaris as a Head of Designs; where he responsible for creating and developing short and long-term product designs for the enterprise to insure sustainable growth of the business.
Emanuel Sylvester Kwaslema - Co,founder & Chief Information Officer
A visionary leader and social entrepreneur, who has vast knowledge and experience working in natural resources management and development organizations with sound and optimistic outlook in promoting inclusive and innovative social business and sustainable tourism. He holds a BSc degree in Wildlife Tourism and Hospitality Management from Saint Augustine University of Tanzania (SAUT). He is responsible for oversight of the enterprise's global technology that facilitate strategic business decisions that supports the enterprise's growth while providing scalability and agility for its operations.
By:
Reginald Victor Runyoro
