E Tourism East Africa conference held in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Nairobi featured giant online travel companies such as Trip Advisor, Expendia and WAYN.
The e tourism workshop was a great success where over 250 people attended with many of the region’s leading hotels, airlines and tour operators present.
At the same time Kenya Commercial Bank has unveiled a new online travel payments system. The bank was one of the key sponsors of the E Tourism East Africa conference.
The KCB online payment system will provide a means for both online payment and real time reservations and bookings.
The Online travel payments is a result of signing a partnership deal between Kenya Commercial Bank and Nightsbridge, a South African based travel software company that specializes in realtime reservations systems.
Unveiling the new product the KCB Deputy Chief Executive, Mr Peter Munyiri said the product would herald the bank’s entry into the budding e-commerce sector.
“This is an important platform for KCB that will help ensure the local tourism sector has easy access to a much simplified and affordable payment solution for their services,” said Mr Munyira.
East Africa’s tourism sector is gradually making the switch to online and Damian Cook, the CEO of E Tourism Frontiers, the company that organized the conference, said it was great to see an increasing number of tourism companies in East Africa make the move to marketing online.
Jerome Touze, co-CEO and co-Founder of WAYN.com, commenting on the partnership, stated that it was a flagship example of the neat fit between Tourism and Social Media. He said: ‘The Journey Kenya profile not only looks great and engaging, the competition they have come up with is one of the best ways to showcase the best Kenya has to offer. Our members love sharing their experiences and aspirations”.
The next E Tourism Africa conference will be held in Cape Town on the 25th and 26th of October this year.
Tags: Expendia, Kenya Commercial Bank, Online Travel Payments Systems, Trip Advisor, WAYN.COM