Nigerian travel booking platform Wakanow.com records around 20,000 users monthly, according to c-founder Ralph Tamuno, though he said it took developers a long time to make the site available for public use.
Tamuno told the Innovators Travel Bloggers Breakfast at the ongoing Social Media Week (SMW) Lagos the platform is focused on building tourism across Africa by promoting easy access to neighbouring countries such as Ghana and Cameroon.
“Wakanow.com has 18,000–20,000 monthly users. Our efforts are not entirely restricted to Nigeria; we are working towards having easy access to Ghana, Cameroon and nearby countries. These are important in building the tourism industry,” he said.
He identified adequate security and infrastructure as important to the growth of the tourism industry.
Tamumo said the inspiration to launch Wakanow.com came from an experience he had, when he found he was able book a flight to a European country from his mobile phone.
“We should be able to do the same here,” he said. “Intra-Africa travel is difficult; we want to build the bridge of travel within Africa.
“It took us 3 years to build technology from scratch because we didn’t want to outsource the technology to US or another country.”
