Moving Tourism
“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might convert some.” — 1 Corinthians 9:22
At WeMove, we build technology to make transportation better — especially transportation for people. Whichever part of the value-chain it might effect positively, we are building for that.
On this journey of making transportation better, one of our major beneficiaries have been the players in the tourism industry. We started properly classifying our vehicle hire requests by industries not so long ago, so no real percentage yet. Sorry. However, by mentally reviewing the requests we get, a lot of it has been from local tourism operators.
But there is a problem: a lot of cancellations has also been from local tourism operators.
We asked our customers why. From the feedback we got, a number of the practitioners find it difficult to fill-up the slots needed to plan and execute a profitable trip. This is a problem that affects our business also, because when they don’t fill-up their slots, they cancel their vehicle hire.
This is recurrent bad business for us, so we decided to do something about it.
The Local Tourism Industry
For the last 2 years, at least, a number of driven self-starters have taken it upon themselves to show Nigerians the beauty we possess within this country. You might know some of the popular ones — Irinajo, TVP Adventures, Social Prefect Tours, etc, but besides these guys, there are lot of others doing amazing things.
The works of these amazing people have gotten recognition and several international coverage (like the ones above) and the number of operators keep growing every now and then. In spite of this, a majority of Nigerians still haven’t taken advantage of their availability to explore more of the country.
One of the key components of a successful tour is a reliable and trustworthy transportation service. That is exactly where WeMove comes in.
As much as the local tourism industry is growing, thoughts haven’t really been given to how best to distribute these tours, so that people can know about them as they become available. This is why our tour planner customers will plan and cancel trips, and cancel their vehicle hire too.
We needed to help out. We needed to help fix the planning process, so that we can get more vehicles hired.
Fixing Tour Planning— WeMove Planner
Sometime in June 2018, we started taking proper look at the problem. We formed closer partnerships with tour planners, visited their offices and did interviews, while observing their operations. After this, we went into development mode in July and came out with a tool to help them layout, visualise and properly plan their tours over a period of time. We called this tool WeMove Planner.
From our interactions with them, our hypothesis was simple: if they properly outline their trips and easily got people to onboard via a unique URL per trip (as shown below), they’ll see everything clearly (including the expenses, as shown below), and then they’ll stop cancelling vehicle hires.
We were not wrong with our hypothesis, but we weren’t entirely right. After planner went live in August, a few trips were still cancelled afterwards. So we listened again.
Based on the most underlying feedback we got, distribution was the part mostly missing.
Fixing Tour Distribution — WeMove Affiliates
Distribution is about networks. People are interested in what you have to offer, but how do you reach them if you don’t have the right networks? So we decided to work on building networks. Physical first, via WeMove Affiliates, then virtual next.
Over the last couple of weeks, Chima Keec Ezeokoye has been cultivating the foundation network required to build our affiliates.
So what is WeMove Affiliates?
Very simple: we are offering members of the public who have access/influence/links to a large community of people to come and help our tour planners resell their tours, for a small commission per sales. We’ve agreed with our tour planner partners to give out a fraction of their rates to you the affiliates. Currently 3%.
How much exactly is 3%? Below is an up-coming tour from Irinajo.ng, priced at ₦260,000. 3% of that is ₦7,800. If you can get 10 people in your network to sign-up for this, you’ll be smiling home with ₦78,000
BTW, Irinajo is one of the planners signed-up to use WeMove Planner and Affiliates to resell their tour packages.
How does it work?
If you’re a WeMove Affiliate, you will get an extra “Affiliate” menu on your dashboard, which also shows you upcoming schedules for you to promote (and your unique URL for them), what you could earn and what you’ve earned. These are shown below:
You are meant to distribute the URL to your network and as they opt-in and pay for the trips, you earn a commission for every opt-ins.
You don’t have to keep checking WeMove for new schedule. Once you’re an affiliate, whenever a planner has a new trip up, you’ll get notification about it. Notifications come in form of emails and Telegram messages, like the one shown below:
So I have a community and want to be an Affiliate, how can I join?
If you’re interested in becoming an affiliate for WeMove, reselling tours for tour planners and making some money in the process, go to our website WeMove.co and register. Then send an email to Chima at chima@wemove.co telling him the email you used in registering, along with other details such as your network and community. He’ll go to the admin dashboard and activate you as an Affiliate and you’ll get an email immediately.
Thanks for reading. If you have any questions leave it at the comments and I’ll reply. I look forward to hearing from you. You can also follow me on Twitter @celestocalculus. Follow WeMove on Twitter too: @WeMoveCo.
