October 03, (THEWILL) – The Principal Executive of Flyzone Tourism, Awomoyi Ayodeji, has described the Akwaaba African Travel Market as a strategic platform that continues to promote business opportunities for travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and tour operators, amongst other stakeholders.
He said, “Akwaaba brings different tourism boards, embassies, tour operators and travel agents together for business opportunities.
Ayodeji spoke at the recently concluded 20th Akwaaba African Travel Market, which was held at the Convention Centre of Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos.
“The first thing is that there is no business without connection. When you have a product and people do not know about it, then I am not sure you can do anything. Even a bad product that is marketed well will sell more than a good product that is not well-marketed. Akwaaba has helped travel agencies, airlines, hotels, and tour operators to connect with one another.
Akwaaba is a platform that brings different tourism boards, embassies, tour operators and travel agents together for good business connections and networking. I have been attending Akwaaba for a long time now”, he added.
Ayodeji stated that what Flyzone does is to connect travel agencies with countries as well for their visas, noting that applying for visas from other countries requires a lot of documentation.
“We arrange many things for the tour operators to ensure they are fine, l because we have relationships with some of these countries based on our algorithms, friendship and business relationship, so it is easier for us to connect with these countries and their tourism boards than for a travel agent to connect directly. So I will say we are like a middleman between Nigerian travel agents and other tourism boards of other countries of the world”, he added.
He described it as thrashing the notion that Flyzone is taking over the jobs of travel agents, saying that his firm will never take over the job of travel agents. According to him, his firm only serves as an interface or middleman between countries’ tourism boards and travel agents.
“So we are not taking over the travel agents business. What we are doing is business-to-business. Travel agents come to us and we go to tourism boards and supply the travel agents the travel products they need”, he said.
Until he founded Flyzone in 2018, Ayodeji had worked with Belview Airlines and Galileo. His experiences and the relationships he had while with these organisations made it easy for him to connect with the travel agencies.
“I was installing software for all travel agencies in Nigeria and this made me travel a lot. We have about 8,900 travel agents all over Nigeria. We also have clients in Kenya, which is a franchise”, he recalled.
He identified visa processing as Flyzone’s unique selling point and niche, noting that he prefers to sustain that niche.
Ayodeji explained that because of the ongoing business relationship between Flyzone and countries’ tourism boards, visa processing and documentation are much easier to achieve. He also stressed the significance of trust and honesty, which he said, are what Flyzone has at a high level.
Ayodeji who was honoured as 2022 – 2023 Akwaaba Travel Personality of the Year, and a member of the 100 Tourism Personality in Nigeria, a member of the 40 under 40 Nigeria, will be honoured as Youth Ambassador by the ECOWAS on October 6.
Janefrances Ebere Chibuzor is a Tourism Writer at THEWILL
