New travel startup Afriktrip has launched an online marketplace to help travelers and locals discover and book unique tours and activities in African countries, offered by independent companies and local tour guides. The Nigerian based startup which was founded early last year went public in November 2020 with the objective of providing travelers with a seamless and instant booking process, helping them save money with its best price guaranteed and cancellation policy.

Afriktrip also aims to provide an element of trust via its tours partner vetting process, review system, and in-app messaging platform that allows travelers to communicate with these local tour guides without sharing their details.

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Speaking on the launch of the new platform, the founder and CEO of the startup Ibukunoluwa Salau said that these days a lot of people are coming to Africa on holiday, especially Africans in the diaspora who are trying to connect back to their African roots, and without such platform, they would have challenges.

“Though they are coming, connecting with local tour guides and operators to take them around is a problem. Those that have managed to solve this problem, are faced with another problem of booking these tours and activities, because almost everything is offline and manual – 75 per cent of tour bookings are done offline,” he added.

Afriktrip is helping to fix this problem, with the bootstrapped startup having signed up more than 300 tour partners, with more than 1,000 tours, and activities in 27 African countries so far.

“Uptake on both sides of the market has been encouraging, most especially on the side of the tour operators,” Salau said.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry