The exhilarating thing about being an entrepreneur is that you never know what will happen next. The thing that terrifies an entrepreneur is much the same.
In February 2004, newly married, Theresa and I left Johannesburg for Hout Bay, ready to start our new life together. On arrival, our first concern was to get the house settled, boxes unpacked and furniture moved to the correct position. However, as we went into March the focus became how to derive an income. What would we do for a job?
I had spent the Christmas holidays pondering how a newfound ability to create applications for mobile phones might be useful. Of course, these were the old Nokia-type phones, not the modern smartphones that arrived only in 2007.
Following on from my inability to book a guest house for our honeymoon (no one had replied to my emails), I wondered if it wasn’t possible to create a real-time booking system for B&Bs, whereby the property owners updated a calendar using their mobile phones.
This worked well, though it opened a can of worms. When I showed a local guest house, the project soon expanded to a more elaborate calendar running on a desktop PC, to which the phone communicated.
At this point, I had a fair idea of how the system would work. Smaller hotels would use my calendar and phone system to update their booking data. This would be “synchronised” to a central server, which in turn would offer a booking engine to the property’s own website, and availability and rates data to the industry at large.
I asked the guest houses in Hout Bay, “how much would you pay for such a system?”. About R200, they said. I multiplied out R200 by 600 properties and figured that would be enough to keep Theresa and me supplied with Hout Bay’s great fish and chips.
I warned Theresa that I would need a further three months to get the system ready and that if we were to charge a monthly fee, it would take a couple of years to build up the client base. And this is where the entrepreneurial leap of faith took place. From her side, there was no hesitation. Having taught entrepreneurship in South Africa’s colleges – teaching teachers for fifteen years – Theresa understood the path we were stepping onto…
Looking back, twenty years on, I think we can be proud of how we looked forward to the way things would work. Online booking of hotels is not considered remarkable today but a basic requirement. People expect to pay online, check in online and view a rich array of content before deciding to come and stay. We also saw how our company should form part of a wider ecosystem, acting as a bridge between the properties and the tourism actors that market and book them.
I remember fondly all of the tourism Indabas, getting up early to drop brochures on other participants’ stands. I loved the workshops we organised, and travelling this beautiful country to visit the towns and areas that create such a unique offering. And then there were the people. We met savvy hoteliers who shared our technical vision of the future, but then there were the Ooms and Tannies who needed a little more convincing. How exactly would this work in between eggs and bacon and cleaning out the rooms? And what was this new “Facial Media”?
Throughout the journey, Theresa and I promoted a single ethos within our growing company; service. We saw ourselves as a partner to the property, simplifying the complex technologies with which they attracted their guests. We reminded our staff that whenever a customer called, they would inevitably be stressed because something wasn’t working as expected. We taught them to listen, empathise, find the best solution, and leave that customer feeling “warm and fuzzy” by the time they ended the call. This remains our focus today.
Of course, the country itself has been through a remarkable twenty years. We welcomed the world in 2010 with the arrival of the FIFA World Cup, and then battled as we coped with load-shedding, water shortages and to top it all, a global pandemic.
NightsBridge is now a family of 150+ staff and works with several hundred partners. We support almost 11,000 properties in over 50 countries and process two and a half million bookings a year. This Christmas, we introduce our first AI feature and promise many exciting changes in the coming months. Technology in the tourism industry never stops.
This article is a reflection on what it takes to build a company that survives twenty years from its birth. Principally, it’s a story of respect; respect for one’s clients, respect for your colleagues, and respect for your own abilities and your belief in them. Theresa and I are very proud of our company and even more proud of the staff that provide the NightsBridge service every day.
Here’s to the next twenty years!
Neil Emerick
Director
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