One of the things that many of our users have been telling us is the inability to communicate with experts on the ground before booking a package such as safari. Many websites waste a lot of time by creating a back and forth system starting with a “request quote” and then confirming payment details over some other manner- this helps tailor the safari but the process is just too cumbersome. We’d rather create the widest range of packages through itineraries and then sell, price them competitively and allow a faster and more convenient payment process directly on our site. We want to bring transparency and efficiency to the East Africa travel booking process without compromising customer service- after all a Serengeti safari is not the same as a flight ticket .

We understand that when a traveller has never been to Tanzania and is confronted with making a complex and large booking package, they may want to communicate with our team to ask questions and further refine, customize and validate their booking before clicking the “submit”button.

We have listened and responded to this important feedback early- we have tested and will be integrating a chat window on each package, so that when you want to ask any questions with a Yellow Masai agent you can using the chat window at the bottom hand corner. Below we have tested it on the recently uploaded Tarangire Safari, but will roll out across all and future packages as well as in the final checkout screen.

Yellow Masai customer service chat

The chat service is powered by Olark. It allows us to deploy this service across the site reliably and access on our phone or computer.

It is like having your very own travel agent to discuss your options except with the convenience and interactivity of the internet. And because the Yellow Masai team is distributed in USA and Tanzania, 11-12 hour time difference, there is a very good chance you will encounter a member of the team no matter where you happen to be booking from. We strive for the best customer services as we realize how important it is to get your trip just right- enjoy!

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.

Cruise Business reports that the Tanzania ferry operator Azam will be implementing mobile payments in the coming weeks, the system will be implemented by a developer Carus. This is an exciting development as it validates the approach that many travel service operators in East Africa going online and streamlining their booking operation- our charter airline partner, Coastal Aviation already accepts mobile banking payment via M-Pesa, although it is reluctant to promote it so much since they will be favoring the one cell carrier Vodacom. More importantly, this news show that mobile banking has become mainstream enough in Tanzania, which is lagging Kenya where some half of all adults use mobile banking and 25% of the country’s GDP now flows though mobile banking services such as M-Pesa.

Yellow Masai soon after our launch will implement mobile payments across the entire East Africa region as a checkout solution on the booking website to cover all types of service providers inc. ferries, flights, tours- we believe having a central place where travelers can compare the options to travel across ferry, flight services will allow us to reach many more customers that would not otherwise book on Azam’s website- we have also being paying great attention to the user experience of our website to make it as seamless as possible.

UPDATE: We have crossed 100 partners

It has been a very busy last few weeks for the Yellow Masai team. Our partners have heard our call for registration and we are only a few more signups away from hitting a big milestone 100 partners.We have also heard that some of our partners have had some difficulty signing up and appreciate that the form being long is probably a barrier to easy and seamless registration- so we will shorten the form considerably to quickly sign up and then partners can manage and complete their profile later- watch for the updates later this week.

Of all the signed up partners, I am very happy to announce that we are working with Coastal Aviation- Tanzania Flying Safari, the most reliable and popular flight charter in Tanzania covering the northern circuit, Zanzibar and the emerging southern circuit including Selous and Ruaha parks. They also own adventure camp properties in the south which we can add to our hotel section. Coastal Aviation operates a fleet of Cessna Caravans that are perfect for landing in grass runways all across the country- they are also extremely driven to integrate technology and become more efficient- for instance, they allow customers to pay by Vodacom’s M-Pesa which as a technology driven travel agent we are very excited that they are as forward thinking as we are.

Coastal's fleet of Cessna Caravans can land on almost any runway- perfect for Africa

We will work closely to integrate our systems with Coastal to allow fully automated bookings by the end of the year.

Another partner that we have been in talks with inc. Hilton Double tree group- who have now opened a couple of hotels in Tanzania, inc. Dar es Salaam. We are are very excited on the momentum- most of our registrations have been in The northern main safari district, soon we will focus our attention to Zanzibar to further increase our reach.

At this stage we are also been talking to other key partners inc. mobile banking side to ensure we set up a great solution that allows seamless bookings Tanzania and Kenya visitors of the site- these inc. the iPay solution out of Kenya and Efulusi in Tanzania. Tanzania alone has now 4 mobile banking solutions after the introduction of TigoPesa last week in addition to Zain ZAP and Zantel’s Z-Pesa and Yellow Masai is committed to working with all these.

We are on track to launch by the end of the month or maybe slightly into October- a big product update is expected in the next week. We will keep you all posted.

Yellow Masai’s Silicon Valley friend Paul Bragiel from I/O ventures, an exciting angel incubator investment firm is in Tanzania this week and we have been meeting various government officials, the University of Dar es Salaam Computer Science department and ending with a meeting with the President Kikwete on Wednesday as well as a final dinner with the economic advisor the president and the Director General of the Commission for Science, Technology & innovation (COSTECH) . There are plans a foot to be build a Tanzania based ICT incubator network to serve the region. Whilst there are incubators in Kenya, Uganda and even Rwanda, Tanzania feels it can be best positioned to create a valuable and differentiated incubator by working closely with Silicon Valley based talent to get the best mentorship, great speakers on unique tech events and truly emporing local developers rather than taking a “mercenary approach”- it will be a truly public-private and local/international partnership. Let us not kid ourselves here- Tanzania still has a long way to go and Kenya is among the most serious ICT hub contenders in the region- with the Govt allocating up to $4 million dollars in grants for web, mobile application and content developers.

Yellow Masai is one of the first serious ambitious ecommerce sites in Tanzania and our Silicon Valley links enable us to leverage their expertise yet still maintain a local link. Together with our friends at Rasello, a vertical local search portal, we made the meeting between I/O ventures and President happen since we believe in creating a local ICT community, but  we also strive in working with the best in the world in doing so to make the best success. I/O ventures silicon Valley mentors include founders of Yelp, Youtube, Bit torrent, Techcrunch, Mint and many more

We look forward to the exciting developments and journey this partnership of working with both silicon valley and the highest levels of the Tanzanian Government to bring tech magic and talent to the region.

Paul Bragiel of I/O ventures visiting ICT students at University of Dar es Salaam

Yellow Masai, Rasello and I/O ventures meeting the President of Tanzania, his economic advisor and the Director General of the commission for science and technology & innovation

Are you a hotel, tour company or charter airline  in Tanzania looking to take advantage of ecommerce and online travel? This is the post for you.

The Yellow Masai team up to this point has been working very much in a distributed manner- Product management and engineering is being done out of San Francisco, California and Chandigarth, India- this is both challenging and advantageous for the team to move quickly and build a high quality services, and will deserve another blog post in future, but we love that we are instantly global since we started the company. Our Partner signup, marketing and core operations is of course from Arusha, Tanzania. But in August, the main core team (minus engineering in India) will come together and we’ll be encouraging signups by visiting tourism providers across the country in a “signup roadshow”- we have an ambitious goal of signing up 1,000 companies and create the largest database of Tanzania travel related merchants on the site. Our friends at Envaya have had much success in this manner signing up NGOs. We plan to cover the major regions of the northern circuit and Zanzibar to begin with- in our visits we will demonstrate the Yellow Masai travel e-commerce platform, explain out value and get feedback before we complete the technology investment.

If you have any questions- please leave comments on this blog- sign up module has been updated with full Tanzania location data.

There has been a lot of debate about internet access technology implementations on the Joinafrica mailing list that are best suited to bring affordable internet access to the masses from schools to individuals. Whilst the arrival of broadband via undersea backbone will greatly increase capacity for internet- it is still limited to the coastal and main cities and there is still a “last mile” problem of getting this bandwidth capacity to the rural areas for maximum impact. There are 2 obvious paths here- via GSM 3G/4G under the traditional telco models and via wifi access, which is an approach that Paul English of JoinAfrica.org is planning. There are merits and downsides to both technologies- however there are some approaches that take advantages of both and blend them. Another angle that is often forgotten is the access and affordable power to make these systems feasible, solar enabled internet access systems as proposed by Green Wifi are promising:

At Yellow Masai- we embrace whatever technologies that lower the cost and are practical in allowing information access across Africa, particularly in rural areas- we support both web access via mobile handsets and traditional PC- we are also building in a sms and mobile banking component so that we work with proven and high potential technologies that reach the most people and allow easy travel around East Africa for both domestic and international visitors. We are excited about promising technological advancements in all areas that have potential to allow us to make our service more available to africans and including solar.