(New insight into Ethiopia’s tourism development)
People promote, sell and grow their business online. That is true. Technology eases people’s life and increases their chance of winning international market and prominence.
This 21st century is full of new smart ways of doing business. And technology is again making individuals, organizations and countries become super powers. So who will fight shy from the boons of technologies.
In fact, there are debates that technology is marring people’s life as well. But, today I am not intending to dilate on the importance and harm of technology. I will try to drive home how countries generate a huge hard currency via technology. Here we go.
The Global Travel and Tourism Industry Statistics and facts indicate that worldwide, the tourism industry is experiencing a steady growth almost every year. The figure of international tourist arrival had increased from 528 million in 2005 to 1.19 billion in 2015.
Figures are extrapolated to exceed 1.8 billion by 2030. Each year, Europe stands out when it comes to international tourist arrivals. In 2015, it had also showcased 607 million outbound tourists. The region had more than doubled the figure portrayed by the second largest tourist origin, the Asia Pacific region.
Europe is developed utilizing the technology of internationally-famed tourist booking online platforms. Hence, such platforms lie behind the success story of each country’s tourism inflow and revenue.
Happily enough, in Ethiopia too a new online tourists booking platform will be operational starting from the next month. The system is known as ‘Guzo’ Go. In an exclusive interview with The Ethiopian Herald Founder and General Manager of ‘Guzo’ Go online tourists booking platform Bersufekad Getachew said that he and his colleagues are finalizing all preparations to officially launch the system within the coming one month.
As the system is developed in Ethiopia and run by Ethiopian sector professionals it would be a credible source of information for foreign tourists to be eager to come and visit Ethiopia without any barriers, he adds.
“We are only waiting to launch it officially after finalizing the necessary preconditions such as: agreements with international financial institutions and banks, all airliners, star-rate hotels and other tour-package service providers and commence service soon,”
The ‘Guzo’ Go online booking platform team aspires unleashing the country’s untapped tourism potentials via the growing digital technology.
He said that the system is designed to entertain all travel needs in one place with detailed information about hotel prices and other necessary preconditions. Based on this, it allows directly finishing payment requirements and book up on client’s demand.
Currently, the international platforms are only helping international tourists to reserve hotel only in the capital Addis Ababa. This is hindering the country not to generate hard currency due to lack of home-based online booking system, he indicated.
“We renamed the online booking platform to ‘Guzo’ Go aspiring to make it a national brand and targeting at interconnecting Africa. It is a pan African digital travel system imbued with the African forefathers’ and leaders motto of Pan-Africanism,” he stressed.
Providing a well-ground and verified information, accepting all payment options with proportionate price and all-inclusive [hotel, flight, car rent and tour package] will make ‘Guzo’ Go competitive in the market among the international booking service providers, he emphasized.
Ethiopia will interconnect Africa via online platform soon, the expert indicated.
The platform will also play an indispensable role in image building. That means the company will recognize hoteliers based on their service quality. Hotel service providers might have wrongly registered the service that they are not providing.
When tourists come to their hotels and miss what they were expecting, things might damage the Ethiopian Hotel Service Industry. It will be stripped of trustworthiness in the eyes of esteemed customers.
The coming of new online tourist booking system ought to upgrade or double the current Ethiopia’s income from the tourism sector. If we can generate this much income from the tourism sector without the presence of effective local digital tourists booking system, it will be easy to predict the change, he stressed.
Having ancient civilization, internationally-famed tourist destinations and nostalgic topographic scenes, the amount of domestic tourist status is almost dead, he said. And the new system will have a tangible solution to strengthen urban-to-urban, urban-to-rural, rural-to-urban and rural-to-rural domestic tourists travel through motivating individuals in various ways, he adds.
“There should not be any Ethiopian that does not know Ethiopia. We should facilitate local travel system parallel to attracting more international tourists. Thus, the company will work both on promoting tourists discovery across the country and digital destination marketing.
Currently, the Ethiopian tourist destination marketing highly relies on trade fair, flyer as well as other traditional way of marketing. But, modern-destination marketing especially seeks more focus and wide implementation marketing through the application of the new media.”
The company administers more than fifteen permanent employees and works in partnership of stakeholders and professionals. It actively works on promoting its services and helping international tourists to book simply, while planning to visit Ethiopia.
According to him, any traveler from any part of the world coming to Ethiopia, will be able to search, book and get using ‘Guzo’ Go. ‘Guzo’ Go offers a very-wide variety of payment options to all travelers, he said.
The main aspiration to join the sector highly rests up on easing the problems seen in the Ethiopian tourism industry. Ethiopia is ranked 116th out of 140 countries in using technology in the tourism sector. More than 95% of travelers use digital travel platform to plan their trips when travelling to a new destination.
Because of this Ethiopia is not able to compete with countries who utilize digital travel platforms to promote their tourism. Countries with much less natural, cultural and historical wealth are able to attract more tourists than Ethiopia.
There is no local -based digital service facilitator in Ethiopia, which allows tourists to use other travel -related services once they arrive in Ethiopia. And the country is now undertaking various initiatives towards stepping up digital tourist destination marketing and promotion activities. Thus, the company will fill the gap of the availability of local based digital travel system believed to promote domestic tourism and local travel industry.
He further said that “We are working in coordination with pertinent stakeholders to provide full, detailed and verified information of all services to the platform users and all travelers. The platform will not promote service and products; we digitally promote Ethiopia as an attractive tourist destination (digital destination marketing), enable fast and secured booking process for travelers and service providers.
Most importantly, ‘Guzo’ Go will focus on providing a wide-range of payment options for African travelers and any international travelers. It is up to international standards. A digital travel platform such as this will play a big role in achieving the recently planned African and horn of Africa regional economic integration.
As the country has been using the international travel booking systems, it was coercing it to outlay a large amount of hard currency. Having such local digital travel platform will solve the problem.
He finally wrapped up calling the government, pertinent stakeholders and professionals to work hand-in-glove and transform the country’s tourism sector digitization through scaling up such innovations, findings and efforts that can support the country’s development endeavors.
Currently, there are tremendous international online booking platforms like; booking.com, trip.com, expedia.com, among others providing credible tour package payment system to visitors across the world.
Founder and General Manager of ‘Guzo’ Go online tourists booking platform, Bersufekad Getachew
The Ethiopian Hearld June 16/2019
BY TEWODROS KASSA
