Segbenu Olusola Medese is the CEO/founder of TravelAfcon, an online tour operator. Through her love of tourism and its potential to inspire change, she has been working creatively in the tourism industry focusing on tours within Western Africa and Africa at large. Olusola established Travelafcon in 2018 with the goal to create pocket friendly tours across Africa and also positively change the narratives of tourists about Africa. She plans to travel to 30 countries before she turns 30.
Olusola currently lives in Lagos where she works as a full time tour guide and travel professional with over fifteen successful tours within Africa. In this interview with Daily Sun, she shares her passion as an influencer and one who lives off travel trade.
Excerpts….
I am an indigene of Badagry, Lagos State and I am a tour operator. I travel for a living. I have been able to successfully take my clients to 11 countries in Africa and also the UAE, which makes it 12 countries in Africa and the Middle East. Personally, I have been to 10 countries in West wAfrica. I am what they call travel influencer for West Africa, I influence people to travel within West Africa because West Africa has a lot to offer and with my platform, I have been able to influence more people to travel to countries they don’t even know as countries in West Africa.
As an influence what exactly do you do in tour packaging and how do you get people to travel?
I put out the package on my platform. I encourage them to go vacation, and sometimes all-inclusive vacation and this includes visas, flights, schedules, hotel accommodation, tours and taxes. It is always an all-inclusive vacation.
So, in all of these, what message do you pass to your clients?
One thing that made me come into the tourism business is because I want people to have different experience of what Africa is, what it offers and its people, because we have a lot to offer in this continent but a lot of people feel that until they travel outside to Europe, Dubai, America Asia, that’s when they can have a swell time, on vacation. I always make sure, whenever people come my trip and they leave, they have good memories and good impressions of Africa because I take them to beautiful places, I show them the history, the culture, how things are being done, I always give them different things for participation because people always come with their own perception of their country by the time they come on my trip and they go back, they always have good things to say about the country.
Now, moving from one point to other in West Africa or beyond involves a lot of challenges, problem of interlining, poor road network, security and other issues. How do you cope with all these?
I think the real challenges I have had so far while moving from one country to another within West Africa which is highly expensive, because I did seven countries at once. I went from Nigeria Benin Republic then to Cote d’Ivoire, from there I flew to Liberia, and that took me about N100,000 for a one-way ticket to Liberia. From Monrovia I travelled by road to Sierra Leone in that I almost regretted doing the trip because what I experienced at the border was terrible. Extortion at the border is horrible. From Sierra Leone, I moved to Guinea, then to Senegal, and to Gambia. I can say the trip was wonderful but the challenges we had were in getting connecting flights, price adjustments and what we see at the borders are not encouraging at all for travellers.
So, what do you want governments to do about border facilitation and cost?
I will like governments to set up a committee of people working at the borders to make it easier for people to travel, to encourage people to travel within West Africa because it will be a huge challenge if people want to travel and when they think of the cost, the stress and the embarrassment at the borders, it is not encouraging at all. I want the governments in the region to address these issues speedily, to make travel really enjoyable in the spirit of ECOWAS.
As it is, are the problems you had in any way affecting your overall interest in travels?
Oh yes, they do but because I have a strong passion for tourism, I just cannot say alright, because of these challenges I want to give up on it. No. Tourism is what I do, live and enjoy. I love tourism, and it is one of the things I want to do in this life without regret but we need to work on those challenges for it to get better.
So as an influencer, what is your message going forward for those who intend to come into travel business in Nigeria?
For you to come into the travel business, one of the most important thing is compassion. If you don’t have passion, along the line you get bored, there will be challenges but the passion and love you have for tourism will make you not to give up easily because when those things arise you have to think of how to overcome and move forward. You must be consistent in what you are doing and if you connect with the right people in the industry so that you will be able to move far, you will go very far at the end.