The outlook for Nigeria’s cyber-market space is huge and Jovago is positioned to tap into this growth

Marek Zmyslowski is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Jovago.com, Africa’s top booking portal as well as an investor in a number of other tech ventures. Marek established the first Jovago branch in Africa in August 2013. Jovago.com simplifies the hotel booking experience by allowing users to compare prices and amenities in a fast and secured manner. In this interview with BusinessDays PATRICK ATUANYA, Marek explains Jovago’s aim to create the best travel booking experience in Nigeria, and why he moved to Nigeria to become a part of the continent’s online revolution. Excerpts…

Tell us a bit about your background and how you were able to get into the African e-commerce business.

I built my first business when I was 21 years old.

Before that, when I was 16 years old, I had gained experiences in hospitality sector as a bartender and this is how I made my first money in high school.

During this period, I also worked in a marketing position in a hotel and had the chance to manage that business for a year. After that I built software’s for hotels before setting up two companies and then moved to Nigeria by providence in May of 2013 and by August of the same year, Jovago was born.

What is Jovago.com all about?

Jovago is Africa’s number 1 hotel booking website, allowing you to get the best prices for more than 25,000 hotels in Africa, 2,000 hotels in Pakistan and more than 200,000 hotels around the world.

Our ambition is to bring every bit of available accommodation online, and to create the easiest and cheapest way for customers to book it.

Jovago was founded by Africa Internet Group (AIG) and is backed by MTN, Millicom and Rocket Internet and we have hundreds of travel specialists constantly in touch with our customers. Our offices are located in Lagos (Nigeria), Dakar (Senegal), Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Douala (Cameroon), Nairobi (Kenya), Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad (Pakistan), Porto (Portugal) and Paris (France).

How has the uptake of your online hotel booking service been in Nigeria?

The growth has been really positive.

When we began the journey of building the biggest inventory of hotels in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa, we were very clear about our commitment to putting convenience at the top of our list,    why we also give the best price guaranteed.

We have expanded from one office in Lagos, Nigeria to a market place that runs in 17 markets right now and we have spent a lot on increasing our operations. We just concluded the partnership with MTN, a couple of months ago. And now, we have additional partners from Millicom and that has enforced the commitments in terms of investments in our project and they wouldn’t do that if the numbers weren’t satisfying.

Hotel bookings often go together with airline bookings and car rentals. Does Jovago offer those services also?

This is the main difference between Jovago and other hotel booking companies because where their jobs ends, is where our work starts.

Even though our primary focus is providing easy access to a large inventory of hotels anywhere in the world, our customer service representatives actually make sure clients know the way to the hotel, ensure they have transportation and the driver knows how to get there.

We call the hotel one week as well as one day to your arrival just to make sure the room is waiting for you. And during your stay we keep in touch just to make sure you are happy because we understand that if you are happy with the hotel you are also going to be happy with us.

E-commerce in Nigeria is booming. How do you see the market and what growth rates do you expect to see for Jovago in coming years?

 The outlook for Nigeria’s cyber-market space is huge and Jovago is positioned to tap into this growth. We published an Intelligence Report recently on the potentials for the tourism and mobile economy. From our findings, if we can sustainably increase the momentum of internet adoption, mobile penetration and safety with online payments, in less that 5 years, we will multiply our output by 300 percent, all things being equal.

How are you able to offer the best price guarantee for your customers?

We optimize the principle of negotiations with all the hotels on our website and provide them with additional value from every transaction we enter with them. This way, they see that they have a higher number of customers visit their hotels through us and are more willing to work with us consistently and offer potential clients affordable rates for each room they book.

You recently moved to Nigeria. What advantage does being on the ground here give Jovago, as opposed to running the business from Europe like some multinationals?

This is a good question. There is a wealth of knowledge that comes from interacting directly with our partners, employees and customer base which is why, even as co-founder of the business I knew moving to Nigeria was a great decision.

Right now, we understand the general market on the continent better than everyone else.  African hotels and customers are much more unique in their tastes and peculiarities and having spent time mastering the variances gives up an edge. For the fact that we operate in this market, we see what international booking companies, who have only footprints abroad, cannot see and that is an essential metric for determining yields in our industry.

What other opportunities are you eying for either Jovago or a new Tech start up in Nigeria?

Although I have got other investments in Nigeria, I believe that we have only scratched the surface for the kind of impact we expect to make with Jovago. My focus is to guide the company to achieve consistent levels of success. We have got quite a good head start in the sector and having new entrants only helps us improve our processes.

I had already gained experience building businesses in Poland in different sectors but developing a business model for a totally new market was exciting to me.

I love creating companies from planning to execution. It makes me feel good to see something I once dreamed about come to life and I like to stay in a hotel when I travel. I just love to be in a fresh room with a cool big bed, and have someone prepare the breakfast for me in the morning to; so the hospitality industry was a natural decision for me.

Have you seen any slowdown in business in 2015 due to the oil price correction or economic uncertainty from elections?

The devaluation of the local currency against the dollar has had some effect on the hospitality sector. However, because our business has an international presence, we have seen a sustained increase in the number of business-travel related bookings.

Since the peaceful conduct of the 2015 elections, visitors have had more confidence with coming into Nigeria. As a matter of fact, we had hotel bookings increase in the last quarter especially in the business travel segment of the market.

Also, Africa’s economy is growing a healthy rate of 7 percent per annum and this is good for business because with a better economy, there is higher capital available for leisure and business travel. So it is expected that the trajectory for the hospitality sector will rise with the economy.

The Nigerian online space, is also going through this phase especially in underserved regions that are outside the major cities but Jovago has begun playing its role in driving awareness for this parts of the country and the outlook is positive for us.

I guess Lagos is your biggest market in Nigeria. How soon can Nigerians living in other second tier cites (Ibadan, Kano, Enugu) begin to use your platform to rate services?  

I’m glad you asked that question.

On one hand, we are educating the customers about the possibility of booking hotels online, about the possibility of making your e-payments and communicating the advantages of it. We let them know it’s cheaper, better, easier and safer than offline and we also educate the vendors.

We work with more than 7000 hotels in Nigeria. Because we understand the potentials embedded in the internet, we organize monthly trainings for our hotels, and for the customers as well as our travel agents who work at bus and airport terminals and all these added benefits are so that we can streamline our processes and more hotels outside peak regions can get as much traffic as well.