Matema Beach offers an impressive range of tourism potential. The area is well known for its local handicraft such as pottery and basket making. The fertility of the land abutting the beach offers a wide variety of fruits, vegetables and grain, most famous of which is the aromatic Kyela rice.

Fish, that type called “mbasa” being the most famous, offers a very interesting and attractive cuisine for the health conscious. Lake Nyasa, particularly at the Matema Beach, has ornamental fish that are more interesting to see than to have on the dinner table! On the land that stands virtually vertically from a few meters from the lake shore, a number of water falls, caves, and rocks offer a heaven for the rock climber, hiker and adventurist. The steep cliffs also offer a very interesting possibility of building a cable car structure that will be able to get passengers from the lake shore to the top of the Kinga mountains to a hotel (or hotels) that will be built in the cool upper lands and down to the hot lake shore below in a matter of minutes.

The community that lives along the Matema Beach has some of the friendliest people in Tanzania. Living a gentle and stress free life of fishing on the lake and tilling the fertile land along it, Matema people will smile, greet and have time to chat with any stranger. Yet, these are people who are very poor materially, and have not even started to use the tourist potential of their beautiful land and beach. The Government has included tourism as one of the solutions in the problems outlined in the Millennium Development Goals. Yet, for Matema, this seems to be a very far dream. Matema Beach is a nugget of gold lying idle in the sand. Properly developed, and with the careful involvement of the local population and great care in preserving the pristine environment, Matema Beach can be the key to the opening of tourism in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania.

Over the last month we have been working with some partners to add the first packages on our newly launched platform. The team is now solely focused on this and signing up more and more hotels, tour companies across Tanzania. I wanted to highlight some of our exciting packages available. These 3 packages represent some of the best of what Tanzania has to offer in about 2-3 weeks back-to-back trip typical of tourist visit stay. Fly into Dar es Salaam or Kilimanjaro airport and then use our booking flight search module to find a connection.

Once in Kilimanjaro/Arusha, one can start with a Safari adventure- this package offers best of the northern circuit starting, the package includes 3 parks and spans a total of 6 days- you will experience Tarangire,  Serengeti and Ngorongoro National Parks at $1,400 per person in an affordable camping format so you get a sense of true adventure.

Kilimanjaro is a much sought after challenge for the most adventurous of travelers- we currently have listed 2 complete hiking packages that are inclusive except for tip and personal equipment (which can further be hired). The Machame route (7 days with a minimum group of 5 people is at $1,800 per person) or if you are worried about altitude sickness and want more time to aclimitize, we added a 9 day option via the Lemosho Route for only $300 more per person at $2,100. Both packages are are challenging and offer stunning scenery- best times to climb Kilimanjaro are between July-October, Dec-February- we will write more on our blog about Kilimanjaro tips and preparations soon.

The only way to end an adventure  is to finish at the beach- That’s when this  ideal Zanzibar package comes in for those who want to combine diving and relaxing at one of the best beaches in Tanzania. Amaan Bungalows for 3 nights and get 4 dives from Sensation Divers from $406 per person, if you are more experienced diver and want more peace and quiet (Nungwi is very popular), you may want to check out the Pemba diving near Misali Island package for the same duration (3 nights, 4 dives staying at the scenic Misali Beach in Pemba, Zanzibar’s sister island) at $506 per person.

We will be adding many more packages that show the best, most popular as well as hidden gems of Tanzania. Sign up for our newsletter and like or Facebook Page to keep updated. We allow you to book and pay directly on our site for each package as well the flights, ferry transfers.

Sauti za Busara 2011

East Africa’s biggest music festival and one of Zanzibar’s main attractions is next week! Sauti Za Busara is in it’s 8th year and it takes place in  Stone Town’s Old Fort over five nights featuring some of the best African artists.

The festival not only features great music with hundreds of musicians, but also has street parade, markets,drum and dance, fashion shows, dhow races and after parties.

Here are some great sources for planning a trip there.

• For official  information visit www.busaramusic.org
• You can also  follow the festival’s  Facebook group here for the latest updates.
• Our friends at MamboMagazine have a great nutshell guide to the festival

In addition, check out Yellow Masai hotel listings for places to stay in Zanzibar from stone town to the beach resort areas. As well as our packages listings- we will be adding an exciting package over the 5 days in the next couple of days to celebrate our launch!

Here’ a video of highlights from the 2009 festival:

Last week, Yellow Masai had it’s first retreat at the Ndarakwai ranch on west Kilimanjaro- the setting was spectacular and dreamy to say the least, and there is no better place to have a meeting- we invited our marketing colleagues from Raspak design in Dar es Salaam who are handling our marketing services as well as other friends just for good measure - because they could not resist such a unique travel opportunity. We discussed all aspects of the business and the team embraced the challenges ahead in building East Africa’s travel Portal. We also got to meet some key partners inc. the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO) and the Tanzania Tourism Board, who were extremely helpful and encouraged by our plans and approach- the best thing about these meeting was the level of open-ness to data sharing, which is critical in helping both travelers and Yellow Masai succeed. We also met a few Kilimanjaro tour operators,being one of East Africa’s biggest tourist attractions- the Yellow Masai team needed to understand the client-relationships and business processes behind putting together a tour to best be able to tweak our online platform to benefit all parties involved- we are about to enter testing and have recruited 10 tours, hotels to work so far- we hope to inc. an airline too.

Mt. Kilimanjaro, highest mountain in Africa emerges in the late afternoon

Ndarakwai ranch lobby

Ndarakwai ranch at night

One of the clearest lessons was reaffirming our assumptions of the need to change the way travel is search,discovered and booked within Tanzania. A few things still stand out that Yellow Masai will address:

Over reliance on physical travel agents for domestic flights: This is a big headache for travels since travel agents do not always have agreements with all the airlines and tours (their size and model make means they have to specialize), they are also not present 24/7 to book your flight or tour in the face of little seats especially in the  high season when hours and even minutes can mean the difference between getting a booking or not. The other issue is cost- why should one pay $40 additional to a $80 ticket for very little value add? Precisionair is now charging travel agents 30,000 TZS ($25) for priviledge to book tickets! this means a very high margin needed for travel agents to sustain themselves if they are not efficient- tickets end up being over 50% more than booking direct from the airline and only adds to the total cost of a tourists package.

Arusha airport & charter airlines- Mt. Meru in the background

Fragmented Travel: When Tourists travel, they are not concerned by just the flight, hotel or tour- but the whole package- there is not enough information sharing between the different parties delivering the different travel services to make the travelers life easier- this coordination makes connections a pain, from having an affordable and trustworthy driver meet you to take you to your hotel or safari tour to being able to pay only one party at one time rather than 4 at different points of travel and hence always having to rely on having cash on hand. Whilst we believe in being adventurous- sometimes certainty and coordination in travel is necessary in order that you don’t miss international flights or key tour when a tourist has maybe a week of time to enjoy their holidays. Business travelers always want certainty!

Arrival lounge at Arusha airport

A tourist awaits her next travel option at Arusha airport

Global approach and communication flows: One can’t help but notice when you board a flight from Kilimanjaro to Zanzibar and then onto Dar es Salaam- the diversity of travelers on the flight- at one point, a french family almost got on the wrong flight because they did not understand which flight they were meant to be on due to the itinerary and boarding pass and the focus on only the English language. Zanzibar has almist 50% of travelers originating from Italy- and given Tanzania’s colonial heritage- Germany is also a major market for Tanzania travel. American foundations and NGO workers originating from the Gates and Clinton foundations are spending months at a time traveling around East Africa delivering their work. Then there is China, with their ever thirst for business and leisure in Africa, that segment is only set to grow more and more. Many agents, airlines and tours have yet to adapt to this globalization- given Tanzania’s global appeal- this trend is only set to continue as the country cross 1 million annual tourists.

Once a wasteland due to Masai overgrazing- Ndarakwai ranch is a model in conservation with this herd of elephants as permanent residents

Discovery of new places and hence travel options is low: As the Yellow Masai team were being hosted in Arusha- a centre of the northern circuit travel scene, little did we know how many different hotels were available at rock bottom prices- many brand new and in operations only a few months with clean rooms with running hot water. Taxi’s did not even know where these new hotels are- Ruth, a Yellow Masai employee who had recently moved to Arusha and is working on signing up hotels and tours in the region was the one who knew about this affordable and friendly hotel Point View hotel, but has yet to have an online presence. Some places are famous but really difficult to find, such as the Khan’s the indian BBQ that attracts tourists and local alike, but is is down an alley.In the era of google maps, why isn’t this place clearly marked? Travellers focus on well known brand names is understandable, but during high season, many a fully booked. All this limits the potential of the travel market and hence the satisfaction of travelers when it comes to providing a variety of easy to discover options.

Khan's, a local BBQ favourite in Arusha

Yellow Masai hopes to solve all these challenges and is looking forward to “putting it all together” in a way that delights travelers in the region. The most encouraging signs during the trip was the connectedness of every business- I found wifi internet in the most unlikely of places and the small kilimanjaro tour provider had a PC with e-mail- this is key for Yellow Masai’s mission.

Sunset over West Kilimanjaro, Siha region

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.