Denis Opudo
Voyazed was founded by Zambian Tiza Shanzi. The company which already has 8, 000 visitors, was launched in October 2017 and allow users to book hotels, charter flights, car rentals, activities, cruises, conference rooms and safari and tour packages via the internet or telephone agents. The startup has signed agreements with hotels and other companies that offer travel and tourism services to sell their services on the website, with customers able to search by category, and book and pay for their desired services.
The founder was encouraged to start the company after failing to find a reliable and affordable cab that could take her around the town. Most of the cab drivers did not have much information either and only took people to one or two places that are locally popular, but, unfortunately, those places were still not in people’s budget. The whole process was too tiresome for most people who usually ended up paying so much in cab fares because of the hours spent driving around looking for a place to sleep. She said Voyazed had spotted a gap in the market between prospective tourists and tourism service companies, with the startup aiming to be the bridge between the two.
Most tourism services in Zambia and Africa as a whole are still closed up. Potential guests don’t know about them. The traditional way of doing things is phasing out. Voyazed is putting these services online and making the booking process easy for travellers. We are widening the choice for customers and at the same time exposing the very best that Africa has to offer in travel and tourism so that the world can see it and visit. Though she said there is major multinational competition, Shanzi said Voyazed is the first local startup in the online booking platform space.
Besides that, there are lots of travel agents and tour operators locally who we do not compete with but rather complement because we partner with them and put their service offerings on our platform so that they can be exposed to a global audience. The CEO appreciates the fact that the startups that came before Voyazedn has built up and the only way to reach their standards is by learning from them and maintain high standards.
