Giving back to Mombasa tourism with Tripesa.

"To whom much is given, much will be required." - Luke 12:48.

Growing up in Mombasa Kenya, tourism was and still is a major source of income for our extended family. My mother, aunts, uncles, and neighbours all made a living from the tourism value chain. As a result, it was an easy decision to join Tripesa, my chance to give back to the sector that gave and continues to give so much.

Tripesa was started to solve the challenges that limit the growth of small and medium ventures along the tourism value chain (market access, product packaging records keeping, payments, and more). Tripesa would help these ventures increase their access to the market, achieve payments efficiency and grow. When we launched on May 20, 2021, and embarked on a journey to understand our core customers across different markets. We tested in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and Egypt. The ambitious spread across Africa was intentional and meant to help us validate the challenges we were trying to fix, and advise where would be best to launch commercially. We knew that Africa as a market is delocalized presenting the need to approach each market differently. While Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania have overlapping similarities as part of the East African community, Egypt’s history and tourism sector date centuries, as such a unique case to understand the resilience of that tourism value chain.

I led our launch activity in Kenya and Walking along Kenya's coastline, it was clear that the coronavirus pandemic had taken its toll on the country's tourism sector. The Indian Ocean's thick layers of seaweed merited from the reduced crowds of tourism in Kenya's coastline. Still, there stood various SMEs slowly and resiliently bustling to life with the hope of adequately taking part in the country's post-covid recovery. More than a month later, having talked to over a hundred SMEs in the space, we appreciated the broadness of the tourism value chain (beyond the mere understanding of hotels and tour companies).

By talking to these companies, we were able to learn about some of their growth challenges, we knew from the start, payments would be at the core of Tripesa, and were cognizant of the many other players in this space, we needed to build a solution specific to the sector. We learnt that while mobile money has simplified payments in Kenya, many of these SMEs suffer from double charges at both the withdrawal and customer payment stages. Those without till numbers or pay bills, risk payment reversals, which lead to hefty losses on their operations. Tripesa seeks to offer a simplified payment solution, which guarantees the safety of money and convenience for SMEs in the tourism, travel, and experience sector.

Many of the ventures I spoke to did not have an online presence, only 8 prospects out of the more than 100 SMEs that I spoke to had websites. Sadly, about 20 operators had been swindled off their money in their attempts to make a website. Tripesa’s no-code website builder is continuously advanced and curated to make it easy for such operators to build a website in less than 30 minutes without suffering the risk of losing their money from conmen. Itineraries will further streamline the operations of tour operators with inadequate capacities to plan their trips and adventures.

Smartphones are more mainstream than laptops or computers in Kenya. Only 3 operators out of the more than 100 that I spoke to, had laptops. As a customer-centric company, Tripesa is in the process of building an easy-to-use mobile application to enable SMEs in the tourism space to curate websites without requiring any coding skills. Additionally, we will dispatch success managers to ensure our customers get the necessary training to help them get online. Brand development and digital marketing are vital components of modern society. Tripesa is actively building the necessary support system to ensure SMEs in the tourism sector merit such.

To me, Tripesa’s impact on my community is the epitome of giving back to the society that has consistently built me beyond my wildest dreams. By providing the necessary structures to help the tourism sector in the various markets that we operate in build back stronger, Tripesa hopes to embody SDGs 8.2, 8.3, 8.9, and 12.6. Tripesa’s technology inclusion for SMEs and rural tourism will help formalize their businesses in aspects, such as record keeping, access to digital sales, and payment channels in line with SDG 8.2, which endeavours to achieve higher levels of economic productivity through technological upgrading. Facilitating entrepreneurship, job creation, and curating effective record keeping will help promote development-oriented policies that support productive activities, Covid-19 response on job creation, and implementing tools to monitor sustainable development policies (SDGs 8.3, 8.9, and 12.6, respectively).

Let's all join hands to continue building the resilience of Africa's tourism, travel, and experience sector. At the moment, we will focus on our commercial launch in Mombasa and Kampala to enable the residents of such cities to merit from their abundant tourism sites and products.

Thomas Mbashu

Tripesa Country Lead - Kenya

+254702888434

mbashu@tripesa.co