YELLO MASAI TAPS INTO E-TRAVEL BOOKING POTENTIAL
E-Commerce has finally descended on the Tanzanian travel scene with a bang since www.yellowmasai.com went on line. A key element, missing in many other ‘booking sites’, is available at Yellow Masai, namely secure credit card and payment transactions, but has also linked up with electronic money transfer services like M-Pesa and others, to allow East Africans to search for flights, resorts and other travel related services, book and pay on line without having to leave the ‘comfort of their laptop or desktop computer’.
Since their launch a few weeks ago over 200 service providers have already signed up with Yellow Masai but the company expects this number to grow to over 500 in the short term, as more and more airlines, hotels, resorts, lodges and tourism service providers get to know how best to tap into the growing market segment of individuals and families wishing to book on line.
Yellow Masai is linked to both Facebook and Twitter, where account holders can sign up for the latest news and information, special packages coming on the market and important destination updates.
Yellow Masai has a dual base in Arusha / Tanzania and in California and while the Tanzanian side is doing the hard sell to sign up new partners across Eastern Africa the American side is doing all the tech stuff to incorporate the very latest designs and widgets. It is from there that price and fare comparison has been incorporated allowing visitors to the site to actually compare airfares, the cost of hotel rooms, meals and transportation PLUS see the rating of such services by previous clients.
The real good news though is that smaller ‘one property’ companies can now take advantage of the Yellow Masai booking site, without having to spend mega bucks to create their own and often due to the transaction sizes not exactly viable booking engine, or ‘buying into one’ on a shared platform, something the hospitality giants in East Africa can afford but smaller businesses cannot. Yellow Masai is independent of any of the companies available for booking, ensuring there is no bias or vested interest in promoting one over the other, as it is ultimately the travelling client who decides where to go, stay and which airline to fly with. All in all, added visibility and choice for the East African tourism industry, and all for the better.
