Africa Business Communities

[Jovago] Influence of Technology on African Tourism Industry

The impact of technology on African businesses cut across various sectors such as e-commerce, banking, and telecommunications to name a few. One sector that has been overlooked in the whole of Africa is tourism.
Before now, hotel booking and reservation were mostly done at the reception of hotels. This improved to an extent when the use of GSM mobile phones and email penetrated the continent. At this point anyone looking to book a hotel would simply get their preferred hotel’s contact on the internet and then call or send an email.

The impact of this technology at this point offered some opportunities for hotels to increase sales and some new challenges also emerged. Lack of added services such as ease of payment (Online or Mobile Money) and hotel booking portals meant that hotels were often forced to cancel a good amount of these bookings when payments are not made early enough or another client willing to pay cash walk into the hotel. This is where online booking portals come in.

Over the years several indigenous hotel booking portals have emerged, most of which are limited to one or two countries which is as a result of lack of funding. Also this sub-sector has attracted huge foreign investment that has created jobs and enabled many more hotels in Africa to be covered. Now a business traveller in Africa can book accommodation in any hotel in multiple states and countries on just one hotel booking portal.

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