Life & Work

Kenya Airways adds hotel inventory to travel offerings

Anyone planning a trip abroad where they are not staying with relatives or friends knows only too well the stress of finding suitable accommodation that’s comfortabe and not too hard on the pocket.

What most people will think of doing in such a situation is start with a blind internet search in the hope of making an online booking – probably not aware that they could be exposing tthemselves to online transaction fraud and identity theft.

At worst, you may discover on arrival that the hotel you booked online does not even exist despite the fact that you already paid for it from your home country.

To avoid all these hassles, some travellers will opt to use the services of a travel agent who will, of course, charge for the service.

But all that is changing as Kenyan travellers become more sophisticated and local businesses come up to offer services that meet these travellers’ needs.
The latest offering for Kenyan travellers is goingsafari.com, a subsidiary of Kenya Airways which was launched a few weeks ago.

This is a website that allows a passenger to take total control of their travel. One is able to book their flight, hotel, car rental and travel insurance from this one website.

Partnership

Its latest offering - the hotel inventory - has received a boost from its partnership with a local company, Just Like That Ltd, which has recently added over 5,000 hotels across India onto the website.

The short-term aim is to bring on board over 1.5 million hotels across the globe in the coming months.

This local partnership gives a face to hotel bookings where the traveller knows where to turn for help should there be a problem in online booking. And as a wholesaler, goingsafari.com offers strategically lower rates since it is able to capitalise on the volumes of sales made.

“Kenya Airways is trying to penetrate the Indian market,” said Sanjeev Sharma, Director of Just Like That Ltd.

“The airline has started flights to New Delhi and will soon be flying direct to the main Indian cities of Mumbai, Delhi with others to follow soon. Now a passenger can book a ticket online with KQ and a hotel in any city in India.”

KQ’s product diversification suggests a strategy to counter the growing competitiveness of the airline industry, by offering an online solution which will offer a one-stop shop service to both local and international travellers.

The portal is powered by a global technology company, Sabre Holdings, represented in sub-Saharan Africa by Just Like That.

While Goingsafari is the first Kenyan portal to offer real time hotel and flight bookings, other portals that offer similar travel and tourism-related services include the Swedish company Travel Start which expanded its African operations when it entered Kenya in March of this year.

Other local websites, such as Twende Twende, work as search engines by collating flight information across various sites and providing a link to the airline with the best deal.

Goingsafari.com currently allows online payment through credit cards although it intends to add mobile payment options by the end of August this year.

The Kenyan market is, however, known for its reluctance to engage in e-commerce because of fears that local sites may not be as secure as they would want.

Sharma is hopeful about the growth of confidence in the credit card business. He sees MasterCard’s establishment of their head office for East Africa in Nairobi as an indication that Kenya is primed to benefit from global best practices in payment technologies, online data security solutions and types of card fraud.

At first glance, it may seem like goingsafari.com is in direct competition with local agents and operators, but by incorporating an administrative module, it allows tour operators to market their packages and travel agents to manage their bookings therefore doubling as a facility which markets Kenya to the world.

So next time you are travelling, the only reason for a sleepless night should be the business deal you intend to close the next day and not where you will stay when you get there.