Flyzone Tourism’s Principal Executive, Awomoyi Ayodeji, has emphasized the impact of the Akwaaba African Travel Market in enhancing business relationships across the travel and tourism industry.
According to nigerianfranknewsng.com, he highlighted that the event has significantly contributed to bridging the gap between airlines, hotels, tour operators, and travel agencies, fostering stronger networks and boosting the sector’s growth.
Speaking in an interview with Journalists at the recently concluded 20th Akwaaba African Travel Market held at the Convention Centre of Eko Hotel and Suites in Lagos, Ayodeji stated that Akwaaba is a wonderful platform for the players in the travel and tourism business.
He said Akwaaba is a platform that brings different tourism boards, different embassies, tour operators and travel agents together for good business connections.
Ayodeji said: “The first thing is that there is no business without connection, what I mean is meeting people one on one, When you have a product and the people do not know about the product, then am not sure you can do anything, that is why I used to say that even a bad product that is marketed well will sell well more than a good product that is not well marketed . So what am trying to say is that Akwaaba has helped travel agencies, airlines, hotels, tour operators to connect with one another . People might not know about all these Airlines, hotels, but because they are here, they get to know each other. Akwaaba is like a platform that brings different tourism boards, different embassies, tour operators and travel agents together for good business connections and networking.I have been attending Akwaaba for a long time now”.
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He noted that what flyzone does is to connect travel agencies with countries and then their visas, stressing that applying for so many visas of other countries has to do with a lot of documentations where they have to follow so many rules.
“We have to arrange so many things for the tour operators to make sure they are fine, what flyzone does is that because we have relationship with some of these countries based on our algorithms, friendship and business relationship, so 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 other tourism boards of other countries of the world”.
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On whether Flyzone is taken over jobs of travel agents, Ayodeji explained that his firm is not taken over the job of travel agents because they come in as middleman to connect countries tourism boards together with with the travel agents.
So we are not taking over the travel agents business, what we are doing is business to business, the travel agents come to us and we go to the tourism boards supply the travel agents the travel products they need”, he said.
On his experience in the industry before establishing Flyzone, Ayodeji stated further that: “I worked with Belview Airlines earlier on and then worked with Galileo and then flyzone started 2018 when I resigned from Galileo . So because of my vast knowledge in the travel industry. I worked with Belview Airlines from 2007 to 2011 and then with Galileo, Galileo is a travel software, and during this period, I was installing soft wares for all travel agencies in Nigeria, and this made me to travel a lot. With the relationship i have with them, when we presented flyzone, it was easy to connect with all these travel agencies because they all know me. We have about 8900 tavel agents all over Nigeria. We also have clients in Kenya, it is actually a franchise, what I mean by Franchise is that the person is using our name for now and also in Dubai, the person is using our name and we are also getting commission”.
In the area of visa: Ayodeji explained further that: “Let me give you an example with Rome, assuming we have a travel agent that needs their clients to travel to Rome , but before they will announce it, they will inform us because of our business relationship to say Ayo, we have a particular pilgrimage site, we will love religious people to visit and then because of ongoing business relationship, we will now go to the people and ask if the have pilgrims that will love to visit this particular site in Rome. We now know these people and these people do not know the travel agents, so because we know them, documentation is easier for us because of the business relationship we have with these tourism boards for a very long time”.
Flyzone boss said right now, he’s working with government, but that he wants to start working with them on the long run on the issue of the visas.
He said visa is Flyzone niche, adding that “because if you don’t stay in your niche , what you have known for years, I don’t know of any other person, but what I have known all my life , so I will prefer to stay in that niche, so that when anybody in Abuja, Lagos or anywhere say who can do this , they can easily say call flyzone”.
On the issue of trust in the industry, Ayodeji pointed out one thing they have is high level of trust and high of honesty in Flyzone Tourism.
We cannot tell you what we cannot do and that is why we don’t do everything, if you come to us for a particular product we don’t have or don’t do, we will tell you immediately that we do not handle this, he said.
Ayodeji was the 2022 – 2023 Akwaaba Travel Personality of the year in Nigeria , a member of the 100 Tourism Personality in Nigeria, a member of the 40 under 40 Nigeria.
On October 6th, ECOWAS will be given him a youth Ambassadorship, so his name will change from Ayo to Ambassador Ayo, including achievers international award.
