Worldhotel-link.com, a project that began as an IFC Advisory Services initiative, is expanding into Africa to connect the region’s small and medium sustainable tourism operators to the global travel market.
The project will give hundreds of African tour companies and hotels access to a global network that facilitates online bookings for tour sales in developing countries.
Worldhotel-link.com (WHL) started as an IFC development project in the Mekong region to connect travel products from the developing world into the global market. The project was eventually spun off by IFC in 2006, and is today a global leader in promoting sustainable tourism and travel.
Through a partial grant, IFC has enabled Worldhotel-link.com to create 16 destination Web sites covering 11 African countries -- Cape Verde, Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Mauritius, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia. The sites are in turn linked to www.whl.travel, a global network that facilitates online bookings for small businesses in the tourism sector in developing countries. Using the WHL platform, local, small, and medium travel operators can create individual, customized Web pages to market their facilities and book customers online.
The majority of tourism service providers in Africa – tour operators, guesthouse, and hotel owners – are small enterprises that cannot afford to build Web sites or set up Web-payment systems for online sales. The increasing use of the Internet by travelers to research and book their travel means that many such enterprises find themselves at a disadvantage, unable to tap into an increasingly significant market.
Low-cost solution
With its low-cost solution, Worldhotel-link.com will help hundreds of Africa’s small tour operators and guesthouse owners to tap into the fast growing online travel market, which today accounts for 25 percent of total travel bookings.
"WHL provides a cost-effective way for small operators to sell online even when they don’t have Internet access. It is suited to developing countries because, unlike other global booking platforms, it has a physical presence in each destination, which not only ensures information integrity, but also that local assistance is always on hand,' said IFC Program Manager Adrienne Harris.
By mid-2008 WHL plans to have over 20 destinations sites in Africa supporting more than 700 SME tourism accommodation providers and tour operators. WHL also intends to make the network pan-African over the next two to three years.
Darron Raw, Director of Swazi Trails, who runs the Swaziland WHL destination site said, “The initial success of the WHL booking portal in Swaziland has been overwhelming. We have responded to more than 100 enquiries in our first three months, 40 percent of which have converted to sales.”
Harris said, "We are really excited about the potential for growing the African tourism market through this particular marketing and development partnership with WHL."
For more information contact:
Daniel Musiitwa
Communications Officer
Johannesburg, South Africa
Tel: +27 11 731 3175
Email: dmusiitwa@ifc.org
