As you can see from the title of this article, the cat is finally out the bag. If I may, please give me a minute to set some context because this announcement involves all of you too!
For the last two years, Jeandre and I have been traveling all over South Africa in an attempt to capture the immense beauty and wonder of this country. All we knew when we first started was, if we could visually showcase how incredible this country was, we might be able to inspire more South Africans to act like tourists in their own country.
Although we’ve done a great job with minimal resources as a small business still recovering from the pandemic, the problem we’ve been seeking to solve has been how to generate enough revenue to cover our costs, then build up a media team and promote South Africa at scale.
So far, we’ve experimented with a variety of business models but none of them have been lucrative enough for us cover our costs then grow, so I’ve been funding the shortfall while trying to figure out our next step.
The interesting thing is, our YouTube videos have gotten enough views that whenever I’m traveling, someone always stops me to tell me that they watched one of our videos and then visited the various places we showcased in that video.
After hearing this more times than I can count, the penny finally dropped a few months ago when an international tourist stopped me in Knysna to say they had followed EVERY SUGGESTION in our video, INCLUDING WHERE TO STAY.
With this in mind, I am very proud to announce that Like a Tourist is officially developing its own booking platform similar to AirBnB and Booking.com. We have partnered with a web development company called CubeZoo and we are attempting to be thorough in the way we build it all out.
The first edition of the website, which will go live from September 2024, will feature curated accommodation spots all over South Africa that we’ve personally stayed at and you will be able to book to stay at any one of them directly through our platform.
Any time someone books through our platform, we will earn a commission which will ultimately help to cover our costs and then give us the resources to build up a full-scale media team that will document and showcase the best of South Africa.
We already have over FIFTY accommodation spots wishing to list on our platform and by the time we launch, many more will follow. If you have any suggestions, mail me here.
That said, we’re not aiming for quantity. Instead, we would prefer to curate unique and interesting stays across South Africa. So for now, our platform is “invite only” and we will only feature accommodation spots that fulfil the criteria we have for “AMAZING”.
From the beginning of 2025, the plan is to expand the website in order to sell experiences across South Africa, as well as book to eat at the various restaurants listed on our platform.
But here’s the clincher. The one major point of difference between our booking platform and everyone else will be quality content.
In other words, we want to champion South Africa as the most beautiful and diverse country on earth. We want to tell stories about amazing places, visually showcase the many wonderful small towns, and alert people to the many hidden gems across South Africa.
Story telling is our ultimate weapon here. It’s how we kicked off the Like a Tourist concept, and we will only continue to double down on this mentality.
My hope is that people will support our local booking platform which will enable us to create much more content about this wonderful country over time.
In true Like a Tourist fashion, we will be documenting the entire experience of creating our own booking platform over the next four months so that you can see what it takes to achieve this monstrous vision.
Last point. We obviously love it when South Africans travel across SA more but our other audacious goal is to promote South Africa abroad in order to get many more foreign tourists to visit our shores.
Every time someone visits South Africa from abroad, it comes with a massive cash injection into our economy. This will be a major focus point of ours moving forward but I’ll leave the details of how we plan on doing this for another post.
So there you have it. The next chapter in the Like a Tourist journey has begun and I can only hope you will support us as we attempt to do something big.
If we get this right, I will always look back fondly at this post in the future. It was the moment we announced our plan to the world. Only time will tell what happens from here.
PS. If you’re still reading this, I’m super impressed. Thanks for your support. Would love to gather some feedback on your thoughts? Mail me here.
