In the last post, we highlighted the new packages and tours we added. Now we ramping up on adding other partners on our site with their 2011 prices.We are getting into the groove of delivering the promise of making travel as transparent and painless as possible in Tanzania and it is great to finally see this happen all in one place.

New accommodation whilst on Safari in the Northern Circuit: We added some Safari Lodges from Lemala Camp Group, great collection of mid to upper range accomodation with camps in Ngorongoro, Serengeti, Lake Manyara and Tarangire Parks. These are now showing up in our search:

Zanzibar Beach Paradise spots: We then added some great places to relax in Zanzibar on both the South East: Paje, Bwejuu and Jambiani as well as the popular northern beaches of Nungwi and Kendwa. Our stonetown hotel of the week- Seyyidda, one of the newer and affordable high quality accommodation options.

Other of the beaten path options: What about other things beside the usual safari and Zanzibar? We are adding those too. Check out listings we have on Dodoma, Pangani and Arusha.

Or how about Hondo Hondo at the Udzungwa Forest near Morogoro- easily accessible with half a day’s drive from Dar es Salaam.

New flights to new destinations: If that’s not enough- we have also expanded flights listed on our search to include fly540 within Tanzania and between Dar es Salaam and Nairobi and expanded options with precisionair- these add more affordable and shorter flights (between $270-400 return) from Dar es Salaam to Mtwara, Mwanza and Shinyanga.

Today Safaricom in Kenya announced upcoming details of their M-PESA ticket service which got us very excited here at Yellow Masai- this is one of the core reasons we believe in serving both the international and domestic market and this service will make it easier for us to connect and light up all our partners with this service especially as we begin to think about entering the Kenyan market in 2011. The partners the service has signed up at launch so far are Air Kenya, Akamba, ALS,Kenya Airways, Safarilink and all IATA Airlines and Hotels. You have to go to a M-PESA store to actually make payments, but regardless this addresses the 20M+ users in Kenya who already use the service. We hope this service will be available for online merchants for doing bookings over the internet.
Right now the service is not available in Tanzania under Vodacom, but since Kenyans are more active traveller across East Africa, we are excited of the prospects of enabling this with Kenyan travelers bound for Tanzania to begin and we will work with out existing partners on providing ticketing via mobilebanking for Tanzanians for M-PESA, Airtel Money, TigoPesa and Z-PESA.

Today fly540, a low cost African airline announced that it will open up flights between the two major cities of Dar es Salaam and Nairobi linking 2 major East African cities. This is fantastic news and will bring more competition, reliability and capacity to move passengers within the region for tourists and domestic travelers alike. fly 540 also flies to Arusha and Zanzibar within Tanzania  flights to other popular destinations in Kenya and Uganda  inc. Mombasa and Entebbe.

When talking to our partners (tour operators and hotel owners from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar) they recognize  the potential of domestic travel and tourism, it is clear that there is an increasing demand of kenyans who want to travel to Tanzania for both business and pleasure. Yellow Masai recognizes this opportunity and has hence positioning itself to be the East Africa travel portal and to integrate travel across the region from hotels, tours to airlines hence we welcome news like this

fly540 currently has a competitive $299 roundtrip offer between Nairobi & Dar es Salaam- Congratulations fly540!