INTRODUCTION:

Backpack Africa started trading in March 1996. From the outset, the objective was to promote South Africa as a preferred travel destination to the international backpacking and travel market. The business had 2 main promotional strategies; a comprehensive web site promoting African travel operator's (www.backpackafrica.com) and a full colour booklet (The Backpackers and Budget Travel Guide) that was published and distributed on a quarterly basis.

The company has grown considerably over the last five years and its web presence has evolved to include a number of travel portals, which cater for most sectors in the travel industry, including bed and breakfast, hotels and safari lodges. These portals are highly visible on the global search engines and attract over 200 000 visits to the sites monthly.

BACKPACK AFRICA BUSINESS PROPOSITION:

Travel portals are in the unique position of on the one hand providing a service to the vast number of travel operators (lodges, BnB's, tour operators, car-hire etc.) and on the other providing a pleasant and efficient service to the traveler.

CURRENT:

We have a backpacker / budget travel portal utilising state of the art Internet and database technology. Our business model allows us to charge travel providers a monthly hosting fee for the exposure we give them on our website.

In addition to the monthly hosting fee BPA also earn a booking commission on each successful booking that is made through the system.

This commission is paid by the vendors and tour operators. Each vendor or operator is in turn an agent for every other vendor or operator in our database. Thus they earn commission by booking the services of each other.

This philosophy of supporting each other with bookings and commission payments has created an excellent environment into which new products and services can be launched.

FUTURE:

We have just launched backpacker / budget travel sites for Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. The databases for future sites that cater for more up specific segments of the travel industry are currently being compiled and will be launched within the next six to nine months.

As our listings grow it is our intension to build travel sites that cater for specific niche markets. Examples of these are the various: - adventure sports and sport tours, university sports and educational activities, historic and cultural tours etc.

INTERNATIONAL EXPANSION:

A key component of BPA's strategy is to open international portals and leverage off the cross-selling opportunities that this provides. The agents on the system will sell the products and services of international vendors who in turn will sell those of local providers.

An emphasis will be placed on earning maximum foreign revenue, but development and administration costs will be kept to a minimum, as they are ZAR based.

COMPANY LOCATION & FACILITIES:

The Backpack Africa Head office is presently located at 233a Jan Smuts Avenue, Parktown North, Johannesburg and has regional representation in Cape Town, Middleburg, Maputo, United Kingdom, Australia and shortly New Zealand. A call centre with 5 travel consultants and technical advisers offer support to the site vendors and travel advice to clients.

The site maintenance is done in-house by the technical department at head office and the development programming and debugging by Philip Hanson.

MANAGEMENT SUMMARY AND PHILOSOPHY

Our management philosophy is based on responsibility and mutual respect. People who work at Backpack Africa want to work at Backpack Africa because we have an environment that encourages creativity and achievement.

The business culture at BPA is unique, the business is run with every effort to match expenditure with revenues, and hence after 5 years of trading BPA's balance sheet is relatively healthy. Our overhead structure is extremely lean and we constantly look for innovative ways of growing our business within our financial constraints.

ORGANISATIONAL STRUCTURE

The team consists of 7 people, under a CEO with five team leaders that manage different sectors of the business. Each leader has been chosen for the strengths they have in their particular fields.

Organogram of the Backpack Africa Management Team.

THE MANAGEMENT TEAM:

Timothy Nel: -

CEO and Sales Manager of Backpack Africa: - 39 years old and was the founder of Backpack Africa. He matriculated in 1980 from Damelin College. He was a gun crew detachment commander in the SANDF from 1982 to 1984 and from July 1984 he managed a family run construction company called Nelcon cc until December 1990.

During this time he qualified as a master builder and was a member of the master builders association.

In 1991 he formed his own construction company, TLC Construction that he still runs today on a limited scale. In 1995 he started Happy Valley Backpackers Lodge in Sunninghill Park and was extensively involved in the backpacking and budget travel industry in South and Southern Africa.

Due to a lack of effective advertising and exposure platforms available to the backpacking and budget travel industry in Southern Africa, he then stared Backpack Africa Internet cc and Backpack Africa Publishing cc of which he is the CEO and the Editor of the Backpack Africa magazine.

In 1998 he started the Gauteng Backpackers Association of which he is still the chairman. He is responsible for the concept, planning and development of the Backpack Africa booking engine and related travel portals and is the current webmaster.

Leon Gerber: -

Marketing and Sales Strategy Manager: - 38 years old. After matriculating in 1981, enrolled for a B.com degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. After completing 1 year left full time study to do articles with auditors Deloite and Touche.

After completing 3 years of articles, decided that the accounting profession was not dynamic enough and left to complete two years national service in the South African Air Force. Leon was selected and completed officers training.

Joined the family publishing business for 3 years before deciding to make a career move into Information Technology. Was a founding partner in 1994 of Global Internet Access (GIA) one of the biggest Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the country.

In 1998 the founding partners sold there business to USKO LTD. Currently a director and major shareholder of Interprise (PTY) Ltd, an Internet service provider focusing on the SOHO and SME markets. Has been involved in Backpack Africa for 6 years.

Greg Sloan: -

UK and French Franchise Holder: - 33 years old and joined us in September 2001. He matriculated in 1986 from Michaelhouse School in Natal, after which he studied architecture at Wits Technikon. He then took his skills overseas where he travelled extensively throughout Europe and worked in both France and the United Kingdom. On his return to South Africa he involved himself in the travel industry.

His experience gives him extensive insight into the finer workings of Backpacker Lodges and Budget Tour Companies. He will be instrumental in the launching of Backpack Africa into the French and UK markets over the next 6 months.

George Nel: -

Operations and call centre manager: - 69 years old and has the following qualifications; a B. Sc. Eng degree from Wits University, Government Certificate of Competency (Works), is a Registered Professional Engineer and has a Master in Business Leadership Degree from University of South Africa.

His past experience which is applicable to the management position at BPA are; General and Project Management 1958 to 1980 with Phosphate Development Corporation one of the IDC companies, Group Managing Director of H Alers Hankey, a Protea Holdings Group Company with 11 branches and International offices, a Director of the Project Management Company in the Murray and Roberts Group, four years in Botswana as Business consultant adviser to the FAP programme and has extensive private and government contacts within the tourism and business industry in Botswana.

 
He is currently involved with the day to day running of the business, office administration and the development and management of the online call centre.

Matthias Dürr: -

Travel Consultant for the online call centre and Data Entry specialist: - 39 years old and matriculated end of 1980. In 1981 he did military service and completed basics and a junior leadership course. In 1981, he was promoted to Lieutenant in SWA Sec 203 Bn.

From January 1983 to August 1984 he was involved in job training with the Department of Nature Conservation, South West Africa. From September 1984 to December 1984 he travelled to Europe on a travel educational. From January 1985 to July 1994 he did an electrical apprenticeship with ELWIRA and in house training with Digital Equipment Corporation in Munich, Germany.

From August 1994 to March 1995 he undertook educational travel in Europe and over landed from Nairobi to Johannesburg. From April 1995 to March 1996 he was employed as a lodge manager for Rockey Street Backpackers, Johannesburg and from April 1996 to December 1996 assistance in the set-up of a game lodge south of Khutse Game Reserve, Botswana.

From January 1997 to March 2000 he managed Explorers Club Lodge & Safaris, Johannesburg and purchased the company in April 2000. He relocated the business to Africa's Zoo Lodge Backpackers where it was incorporated from March 2001 to November 2001 and assisted with the running of the Backpack Africa call centre. Presently he is employed by Backpack Africa in the above capacity.

Carol Nel: -

Company accountant and booking system accounting administrator: - 37 years old and matriculated from Redhill High School in 1981. She started with Deloittes, Haskins and Sells as an auditor. In 1984 she started with L & C Steinmuller in Rivonia as the general bookkeeper and stayed with the company for 4 years. At this stage she was responsible for the general accounting and office administration, carrying the books through to the Trail Balance.

In February 1987 she started her own bookkeeping practice and did the books for Sunninghill Pre-Primary School and Gobal Systems cc. Gobal systems was renamed Global Technologies cc and in 1996 Global Technologies cc became Global Internet Access (PTY) LTD, which was one of the major IT success stories in South Africa. Here she was responsible for the accounts department and carried the books through to trial balance as well as the accounting system development and integration.

She left the company in 1998 and is now the bookkeeper for Backpack Africa Internet cc and Backpack Africa Publishing cc. She is responsible for the bookkeeping, accounts, office admin and the integration of the booking engine accounting and data integration into the existing BPA accounting software.

Philip Hanson: -

Programmer and Systems Architect: - 32 years old, Philip matriculated in 1987. He was awarded a BA Psychology Degree at Potchefstroom University in 1990, and completed an Honours degree in Psychology in 1994 through UNISA, having studied part-time.

After Military Service, Philip joined FirstRand Bank Ltd (then First National Bank), and worked for them for 7 and a half years. Philip began working in the Human Resources Division of the Bank, then moved into Internal Auditing to gain broader business exposure. He qualified as a Certified Internal Auditor by passing all four examination papers at first sitting at the IIA Board of Regents' (based in the USA) exams.

He also was top of the class in Wits Business School's Management Advancement Programme in 1997. In the latter part of Philip's banking career, he worked in the Card and Electronic Banking Division, and then finally was seconded to an E-commerce project team. At the end of 1999, he was approached by Unibase Solutions to join them as a Project Manager, and has worked for Unibase Solutions since early in 2000.

He is an experienced project manager, and also programs extensively in Universe Basic, HTML (including CSS and DHTML), JavaScript and does a limited amount of scripting (Perl/cgi). He has a good working knowledge of Unix (SCO flavour) and Linux. He is currently the head programmer and technical guru that maintains and develops the back end of the site.

Robin Stoker: -

Systems Management: - 20 years old, Robin matriculated from Crawford College in Lonehill, South Africa in 2000.

He finished his Bachelor of Information Systems in the first quarter of 2003 and has been working for Independant Minds since Dec 2002.

His interests lie in systems development, networking, and security and has begun to gain experience in fields such as image editing, website planning and design, database design, HTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySQL, and CSS. At the moment he is performing website server maintenance, and front-end website design.

While studying he did some freelance work as well, developing back-ends for various websites using the lethal combination of Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (otherwise known as LAMP).

PAST: -

The initial technology deployed was static HTML which was developed in-house, but from inception we had the dream of a “database driven” site, that incorporated all our business value propositions. This requirement came to fruition in March 2000 when we entered into a technology joint venture with UNIBASE SOLUTIONS.

It was agreed that UNIBASE would provide the technology to drive the various booking engines, databases and servers according to the BPA specifications and in return UNIBASE would enjoy a percentage of the proceeds that are generated through the website.

PRESENT: -

The site runs on a Linux (Red Hat flavour) web server. The core functionality for the booking process is provided by Universe Basic programs, interacting with the Universe Mutlivalue Database (provided by IBM).

The web development toolkit which allows for this is called pSygn, which is marketed by Global Technology in South Africa, and abroad. pSygn allows for stateless connections with the server, but each contact with the server establishes a session, which remains intact until the browser is closed, or the base URL is called again.

The session caters for the carrying of permanent session variables, without the need for repetitive file writes by the web developer. Developers have access to these variables to write away to the database, or to display in the html output, at any stage during the session.

pSygn allows for a particularly powerful combination of client-side scripting and server-side basic programs (subroutines), whereby JavaScript dynamic arrays and functions can be populated by pre-page Universe subroutines for the purpose of client-side validations and form element population.

Note that in all instances, web page objects are built "on the fly", and there are no html files to be found on the web server for pure pSygn sites.

In order to improve search engine rankings, we have used Universe sub routines to write 'hard copy' web pages to the web server at key process events in the "interactive" environment.

For example, as a vendor updates his data on the database, we use a Universe subroutine (together with a small Perl script) to ensure that an html file is updated/written to the web server.

This helps the Search Engine robots to pick up the site contents. This means that the html pages stay in sync with the Universe Database, and most/all hyperlinks redirect users into a sessioned pSygn environment from where bookings can take place.

FUTURE: -

Continuous software development will ensure that we remain among the leaders in the field of internet travel and related products. Through our strategic partnership with GLOBAL TECHNOLOGIES and UNIBASE SOLUTIONS and the daily interaction we have with the travel markets, we will ensure that our integration into existing and future systems remains a priority.

The entire staff and management at Backpack Africa are committed to these goals and ensuring that they become reality.

© Copyright 2003 Independant Minds Online Travel Solutions (Pty) Ltd.