Chapter 2. The four system pillars of Experience Africa

17th December 2016

Elephants are among the most intelligent creatures on the planet. Their complex social relationships, kinship bonds, and capacity for emotions makes them unique in the animal kingdom. They are the gardeners of the forest and the keepers of the savannas.

Without them the biodiversity in these ecosystems would collapse. In the past 100 years African elephant populations have been reduced by 97%. More than 50% of Africa’s remaining elephants could be killed in the next 10 years if illegal poaching continues at the current rate.

The truth is…the fewer elephants left on our planet, the higher the price for ivory. Throughout Asia, ivory has long been seen as a symbol of wealth. With China’s booming middle class, demand for it has skyrocketed.

The Ivory Game – A Netflix Documentary
https://theivorygame.com

The four system pillars of Experience Africa

1. Safaris CMS, S-Web Content Management
2. S-Web creates thousands of tour operator websites.
3. TFBMS for Safaris
4. Villas Cloud connects to receive data from all distribution systems and connect to individual safaris inventory systems

1. Safaris CMS, S-Web Content Management

Few would argue that ‘S-Web’ the Villa Secrets CMS is Villa Secrets most important attribute. It’s certainly the first thing we currently present on the Villa Secrets Network homepage.

Here is the article…

The S-World Villa Secrets Network has created a prototype web framework seen on Villa Secrets.com. This web framework can be described as ‘WordPress for Dummies,’ as it takes complex themed WordPress pages that take specialists a few hours to make (like this), improves upon them and creates a super simple CMS (content management system) that allows the improved version of the page (like this) to be created in a tenth of the time by a non-specialist.

The entire Villa secrets website is created as a series of CMS, so that out the box, a new user can build a great looking website with excellent mobile responsive design in no time at all. (See video S-Web CMS)

The main two points are simplicity of use. In that a child of 7 years of age could use even its most advanced functions and beauty of presentation. And I guess we could throw in great responsive design soon enough, only a little way to go on that.

The CMS has been designed so that we can send it to property owners and they could create or update their own pages. An action that would be hard to complete if not for its simplicity.

I have specked out some updates needed for Safaris. Such as that of what the other attractions are on, or near any given safari, and how far is it from other popular accommodations for multi leg trips. Plus, a detailed CMS on all the different animals and birds that one is likely to see and the probability of seeing one particular animal or bird during a two-night stay? And of course, which times of the year are best to visit, using points basses and cross matching algorithms to even out all scores so one safari can’t just say, its great every month.

Making the CMS super simple and having a small team dedicated to helping safaris to fill it in will enable us to get thousands of safaris on line in a short time with greater content and more useful information than other systems. In addition, in comparison to most tour operator systems, we will be able to offer exact pricing, not just a minimum price.

With the exception of the team that would present the system and assist safaris to use it, there is very little work needed to upgrade what we have now for Villa Secrets to what we need for Experience Africa.

2. Experience Africa creates thousands of S-Web tour operator websites.

This may sound a bit excessive but it’s very important that before we try to get Safaris to use our systems that we give them a reason to want to. The only reason for using any booking system is to get more bookings. And so, we need to generate as many bookings as we can to encourage them. So, we may choose to create 64 such websites from the current Villa Secrets framework in the summer of 2017. Another 192 using the updated framework in late 2017 and 784 more throughout 2018 with the capacity to create a great many more…

To deal with bookings and customer service ‘the Sienna-Bot AI’ takes most of the strain, where after there would need to be deal done with either an existing tour operator, or we would need to create a central reservations office manned 24/7 in various languages. However, as the ‘Sienna Bot AI’ is doing most of the heavy lifting, we can mostly use a very young and inexperienced team, motivated mostly or solely by commission. Indeed, it would be nice to make such a team from the residents of Mandela Park, the township in my old home in Hout Bay, Cape Town. (ticks off another box…)

There would be a number of different scenarios for those who received the licenses and the deal would most often be that commission was split 50%/50% (company / Anti-Poaching fund). And so, the more ‘tour operator websites making money, the better.

Ten different types of owners for the tour operator websites

1. Travel Individuals wishing to start their own small business
2. Safari Companies who have lost out in recent years due to a poor internet presence
3. Safari’s themselves
4. International tour operators and travel agencies
5. African tour operators and travel agencies
6. Franchises opportunists
7. Villa Rental Companies
8. Individual High-End Villas and Private Islands in Africa
9. Mandela Park Achievers
10. Conservation Charities

Google Grants

Note the last set, Conservation Charities, such charities can apply for Google Grants.

Now I wish to be completely upfront about this and will present this or a similar communication to Google Grants, Google.org & if possible the foundations of Google’s founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin. I’m sure the method I present would not be exactly what Google Grants had in mind, but at the end of the day seeing the good that will come of it, I hope they will allow our initiative.

Maybe Google will approve, or maybe they will not.

However, this is the plan…

For Conservation Charities, we would normally see them as licensors. However, 99% of the running of the businesses will be conducted from the operations base, which is now likely to be in Hout Bay staffed mainly by the township folk .

In the case of Conservation Charities S-Web websites would work on a 25%/75% split (operations/fund for stopping poaching).

The Conservation Charities would set up a new nonprofit company receiving 75% of all commissions. And it would apply for Google Grants which offers $10,000 a month in free advertising limited to $2 per click.

Should we create a 2nd tier network (64 different companies) receiving $10,000 each per month, that equates to $7,680,000 in free ads, that should return at least double being $15,360,000 in commission, which would be split 25% = $3,840,000 for operations and 75% = $11,520,000 for the fight against poaching.

I’ll not hazard a guess on how much the other thousands of websites will make, as in part this is a book all to itself and in addition this income is bonus income. The point is to control enough market share to make the individual safaris want to use our bookings system. This is due to the number of clients that are using it and that each booking made from the websites increased the desirability of the system for safaris to use in the first place.

This is the creation of ripple effects, American Butterfly style… or as may be better put… African Butterfly.

3. TFBMS for Safaris

4. Villas Cloud connects to receive data from all distribution systems and connect to individual safaris inventory systems