Industry Travel, Ecommerce Key people Paul Midy | Founded 2013 Website travel.jumia.com | |
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Headquarters Lagos, Lagos State, Nigeria
Nairobi, Kenya
Dakar, Senegal Products Online hotel reservations | ||
Jumia Travel is an online travel agency providing online hotel reservations across the continent. The company provides accommodations ranging from guest houses to luxury hotels, to meet the growing demand for leisure and business travels from the African middle class. The main office is in Paris, France.
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History
Jumia Travel was founded in 2013 by the E-commerce platform Africa Internet Group (now Jumia) and is now backed by MTN, Rocket Internet, Millicom, Orange, Axa and financial partners.
Operations started in Nigeria, the largest economy in the continent, and expanded to other African countries in 2014, starting with Kenya, then in Senegal. Recently Jumia Travel expanded to Algeria.
In 2015 Paul Midy joined Jumia Travel as Chief Executive Officer. M. Midy has an engineering degree from the Ecole Polytechnique in France) and Columbia University (USA), and after spending 7 years at McKinsey & company.
In June 2016, the company was rebranded from Jovago.com to Jumia Travel, to join other companies in the Jumia ecosystem. In Asia the brand remains as Jovago.com In 2016 Jumia Travel signed a global partnership with AccorHotels to widen the range of luxury hotels offered on the website, and to work with the French hotel chain to develop their business interests Africa
In 2016 Jumia Group set to become continent’s first unicorn, being valued over 1 billion USD.
Before June 2016 Jumia Travel was known as Jovago.com in Africa. In Asia the brand name remains Jovago.
The website
The Jumia Travel website operates out of 10 local offices across Africa and 3 regional headquarters in its main African markets (Lagos , Nairobi and Dakar ).
The website is available in English and French as well as in other African languages (Yoruba, Ibo, Hausa and Swahili), making Jumia Travel the first global travel agency to use local African languages on its website. The customer service provides support 24/7 out its African offices.
Jumia Travel makes money by collecting commission for the online customers they provide the hotels. The commission is agreed with hotels depending on the size and location of the property.
In East Africa Jumia Travel offers both resident and non-resident rates to encourage people living in the region to travel to neighboring countries. Customers can pay using local payment options including mobile payment applications such as M-Pesa, SimplePay or MTN’s mobile money M-Pesa, SimplePay or MTN’s mobile money.
Jumia Travel uses some of the latest technology, such as mobile apps, Extranet, Progressive Web App and can provide customer support on tools like Whatsapp, Viber for Mobile), following the growing internet and smartphone penetration in Africa.
Main competitors
Awards
The company has won multiple awards as a pioneer in booking hotels online in Africa. These include “Best Hotel Booking Portal” (Lagos 2015), “Leading Online Hotel Booking Company” and the “Best Use of Technology” in Nigeria (Lagos 2015).
Jumia Travel also participated in the 39th Africa Travel and Tourism Association annual world congress to promote the development of tourism to and across Africa.