First Swahili hotel booking website launched in Tanzania

Dar es Salaam - November 12, 2015 – Jovago Tanzania announces the incorporation of a new Swahili website that has officially launched today. The new Jovago addition intends to make tourism services and accommodation easier than before in East Africa since most Tanzanians use Swahili as their first language.

“We are proud to announce the inclusion of the Swahili language, this is a step towards our goal of customer satisfaction and language localization” stated CEO Paul Midy “as the leading hotel booking website in East Africa, we should speak its most popular language. At Jovago.com, we are passionate about the needs of the customers with this in mind, we bring our creativity and innovation to the table so that our users can have a personal touch to our services even though the transactions are carried out online.”

Andrea Guzzoni, Country Manager of Jovago Tanzania explained that number of Swahili users is increasing steadily but few Tanzanian websites can serve their customer’s needs. This has a negative impact on e-commerce in Tanzania as websites are not user-friendly in terms of language. “We aim to promote internal tourism and since Jovago is the first Swahili website in Tanzania for online hotel booking, we hope there will be a tremendous growth of the industry as 99% of Tanzanians speak swahili as their first language and they will easily be engaged in e-commerce” added Lilian Kisasa, Jovago’s PR Manager for Tanzania.

With the Swahili option now made available on the website, Africans native to Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda amongst others can have access to Jovago services in their local languages. In this bid to expand the reach on Africa and boost customer relations, plans are being made to include the amharic language which is a major language of Africa’s 2nd most populous country - Ethiopia.

About Jovago

Jovago.com is an online hotel booking service with offices in Lagos (Nigeria), Nairobi (Kenya), Dakar (Senegal) founded by Africa Internet Group and has MTN and Millicom as its investors. Jovago.com, Africa’s No.1 booking portal, facilitates the booking process for its users to provide them with the best hotel booking experience with fast, transparent and easy-to-use services. Jovago.com has over 25,000 local hotel listings across Africa and over 200,000 hotels around the world.

About Africa Internet Group

Africa Internet Group introduces and accelerates the online shift in Africa – for its people and its culture. It is committed to running successful and vibrant internet companies which boost the evolution of African online culture. AIG is the parent group of nine successful and fast-growing companies in more than 26 African countries, accounting for over 3,500 staff. AIG cares about entrepreneurship and brings together all the key elements required to build great companies: team, concept, technology and capital. Its network of companies includes JUMIA, Kaymu, Hellofood, Lamudi, Carmudi, Zando, Jovago, Lendico and Easy Taxi.