The events of the past few weeks have got me thinking once again about one of the two most urgent problems we face in tourism today: development (the other, of course, being resources and the sustainability of the transport industry).

And one of the topics which limits development - and we’re talking development of emerging entrepreneurs here - is market access.

It’s a particularly fraught topic, too, because it seems to me that the more articulate you are and the more comfortable you are with the English language (English being the lingua franca of our country), the more you’re likely to be heard - and the problem for emerging entrepreneurs in South Africa, of course, is that English is very often their second or even third language.

And English is the language of the web, too: Wikipedia, for instance, has 2,390,000 articles in English but just 754,000 in German and 364,000 in Spanish - with about 10,000 articles in Afrikaans and only 143 in Zulu and 100 in Xhosa. Which kind of sucks when you consider that the web is by far the least expensive way of communicating your message to the broadest possible audience.

The odds against small tourism businesses seem overwhelming.

One company which has also given a lot of thought to the question of access - and to many other, related issues (like sustainable and responsible tourism) - is whl.travel. It’s come up with a workable, profit-making solution that really does seem to benefit everyone - from local operators (including emerging businesspeople) to service providers and, yes, the company itself.

whl.travel was started in 2002 in selected regions of the Far East as a project of the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank group), which sought to bring small- and medium-sized accommodation businesses and tour providers into the e-marketplace.

It was so successful that it was soon turned into a private company that now operates booking portals owned by local ‘market place operators’ (MPOs or franchisees) around the world, focusing on service provides like smaller hotels, guesthouses and tour operators - particularly in developing countries and emerging markets where it feels it can make difference.

What sets whl.travel apart, though, is its business model - which emphasises ‘The Local Connection’ and ‘Caring For The Destination’ and which embraces both established and emerging businesses.

The Local Connection is all about providing franchise holders (MPOs) with a complete package that includes the technical platform (the software) for creating their portals as well as Web marketing and management support. These MPOs then search out the operators in their areas for listing on their sites - which allows them direct access to the on-line shopper (when you buy accommodation or a ticket through whl.travel you’re buying directly from the local franchise provider - not from an overseas tour operator).

The company places particular emphasis on sustainable tourism and concentrates on travel experiences that enhance the character of the destination through the enjoyment of the local food, aesthetics, culture, heritage and the environment.

“Our first goal is to make sure the that local market place operator (MPO) is profitable,” said the company’s South African head, Zachary Rozga. “Our USP (unique selling point) is that we concentrate on the sustainable tourism market and we therefore look for unique tours and attractions to list on our sites.

“In some regions, development is more important; in others, it’s all about conservation or preservation.

“We believe that if the travel industry is going to survive, it has to buy into the concepts of sustainability and responsibility.

“To achieve that in our business model, we’re drilling down as far as we can go.”

Zack first came to Cape Town as a development consultant where he worked in the local townships, so he has some serious experience of the conditions which many South Africans have to face every day. That’s how he met Thope Lekau - an old friend of This Tourism Week and the owner of Kopanong B&B in Khayelitsha.

“Thope is the executive director of Dibanani (Women Coming Together) and we had to convince her that on-line business through whl.travel was going to be good for her and her colleagues.

It took about a year and a half before they came on board.”

Now, though, because of whl.travel, you can book accommodation on-line with any one of ten B&Bs in Khayelitsha, Langa or Gugulethu.

“It’s all about market access, although in our negotiations we realised how little they knew about running a tourism business - about things like USPs and pricing,” said Zach.

To address this problem, said Sales and Marketing Manager Jemma Hofmeyr, the company offers two-day short courses which are financed by government or donor funding. “The optimum number of delegates is fifteen to twenty, and it costs about R40,000 to run each course,” she said.

“It’s important to teach people how to get business for themselves,” said Zack. “whl.travel is only the first channel; you need a multi-faceted approach.”

Independent travellers rely very, very heavily on the internet for research and booking - and the problem for developing entrepreneurs is the entrenched tourism channel. “Especially in Africa,” said Zach, “tourism is sold through packaged tours and activities - but this needs to be unpacked if we want to build the independent travel market.

“Even high-end properties often don’t know how to handle FITs (fully independent travellers). What if an independent traveller wants to have lunch? They don’t know what to do with him because they’ve always sold meals as part of their packages.”

South Africa relies heavily on FITs through its self-drive market and service providers (tour operators, attractions) are used to taking bookings from individuals, he said. But there are cases across the continent where tour operators have blocked service providers from advertising their rack rates - because they don’t want their customers to know their mark-ups.

“But now there’s a move away from advertising rack rates to advertising internet rates,” he said.

“I grew up in a resort town in Colorado in the USA and saw how the dynamics of the town changed because of mass tourism. But when I came to Africa, what I saw was colonial tourism - tourism was happening from outsiders, and there was little ownership from locals because of the nature of inbound/outbound safaris.

“These operators are fighting change, but we’d like to see competitiveness in the African market.

“Tourism in Africa is still also largely government run - and governments don’t have a clear understanding of the markets or how to gain access to them.

“We’re trying to empower the private sector.”

Zack believes that, because of their emphasis on working with small operators, whl.travel can take significant market share from the established networks - “because the established networks won’t touch the small guy.”

What was interesting for me, when I visited the whl.travel’s Cape Town site, was that they obviously understand the FIT market very well - you’re immediately confronted with four choices: budget-, mid-range-, and top-end accommodation and tours and activities.

And this is what makes whl.travel significant, I think: that the ‘little guy’ has exactly the same exposure as the big corporate.

It’s opening up market access.

Yay!

Funny how it took the private sector to do that…

whl.travel’s South African portal presently has MPOs in Cape Town, the Cape Winelands, Johannesburg, the Mpumalanga Highlands, The Panorama, the Midlands Meander and the Wild Coast/Eastern Cape and the company is planning to sign an agreement with a Garden Route operator in the next day or so. For information about listing your property, service or attraction - or if you’re interested in acquiring a franchise for the whl.travel portal in your region, contact Jemma at jemma@whl.travel.