The Principal Executive Flyzone Tourism, Awomoyi Ayodeji says that Akwaaba African Travel Market has become a meeting point for exchange of ideas amongst travel agencies, airlines, hotels, tour operators to connect with one another.
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.
“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 …. Ayodeji said
“”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”.
He said flyzone connects travel agencies with countries including their visas, and explained that applying for visas to different countries involved a lot of documentations and guidelines.
“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”.
Reacting to the speculation that Flyzone is taking over jobs of travel agents, Ayodeji explained that his firm is not taking over the job of travel agent rather they are serving as middlemen to connect countries, tourism boards together 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 said …
“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 …“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 Tourism boss said currently, he is working with government and would continue with them on the long run on visa issues.
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 affirmed that flyzone is a very reliable company.
“”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.
He is expected to receive ECOWAS youth Ambassadorship on October 6th, 2024.