Set up by two Norwegians, SavannaSunrise aims to put locally owned, mid-range hotels in Africa on the online map. These types of online B2C processes are probably going to be a spearhead of both digital take-up and data use. Russell Southwood spoke to one of the co-founders Havar Bauck about what it’s been doing,
SavannaSunrise started with bricks and mortar:”My co-founder Endre Opdal and I set up a budget apartment hotel in 2013 next to Nairobi International Airport. There were no budget hotels and it was a simple idea. Neither of us were hoteliers”.
“We’re marketeers and we both went to the same business college in Norway. We decided to market it online. We started getting bookings from day 1 and by April 2014 we had 100% occupancy. We expanded to 10 apartments and we’re now one of the most reviewed hotels on Bookings.com for Kenya, surpassing even the Hilton.” Reviews are a useful proxy for bookings, data that Bookings.com does not make available.