#30: Financing Trips is no Easy Feat - Tourbuddy

It's the concluding part of our thrilling and eye-opening conversation with TourBuddy . It sure has been an exciting conversation so far. Right?

Before you dive right in, what have you found most profound in the previous editions? Share with us in the comments.

Comfy: How did you finance your trips before starting your tourguiding business?

Tourbuddy: Financing trips is not an easy feat, to be honest. You can’t travel without a job that pays for it.

As I mentioned earlier, I used to do social media marketing for brands. I did a bunch of other stuff as well, I used to make artwork, clothes, and interior and exterior decoration. All of these things used to put money on the table for me and at any chance, I would travel. Travel was an escape for me.

Comfy: In these 6 years, what changes have you seen in the tourism scene?

Tourbuddy: I think tourism has evolved and changed for good, for the most part.

Thanks to the internet, we have more publicity for destinations. More people are yearning to travel now, and places are being mentioned more and talked about more. That is a really good thing. I hope more comes in such that our tourist destinations can grow and become a major source of income for the country on a grand scale.

On the negative side, there is the insecurity issue. The cost of traveling has also increased with the exchange rate fluctuations, and increase in transport expenditure. Traveling outside Nigeria is more expensive right now compared to what it used to be. A few years ago, you could go to Benin with just 80 thousand naira but now, if you go with 200k, I don’t know what you can even do there.?

Before, you could go to Rwanda and spend a week there with 250k. But right now, 700k can barely cover your flight. It is crazy.?

Comfy: What advice would you give someone who wants to start out traveling or tourguiding?

Tourbuddy: I see a lot of people trying to get into traveling or tour guiding. You just wake up and see that they have a name. I don’t think it works that way. I think you should be close to or work with someone in the industry before setting out on your own.

Volunteer somewhere, and learn, it would help you cut out a lot of mistakes and years of error and learning and relearning from your journey.

I discover that people in this generation don’t like to ask questions or work under people, they often just want to start off on their own. And honestly, you can’t be consistent that way.

I didn’t just start doing Tourbuddy, I worked somewhere before I started and I am still open to working with people because I know there is still so much to learn.

For anyone trying to get started, travel, enjoy life, make stories, and share with people. But most importantly, volunteer to do some work with someone. Learn from what they do, and be in close proximity with people. This is not to take advantage of people but to work, really do work. As you work under someone and show your value and relevance, I think people would want to show you more.

Comfy: What changes would you love to see in the tourism sector in the near future?

Tourbuddy: The changes I would love to see, especially in Nigeria, would be that we prioritise tourism and begin to invest in it. Invest in local tours. Many Nigerians love tourism but they just don’t appreciate local tourism. They prefer to do international tourism, go to Dubai, London, Paris, Morocco, and the like. That alone is not tourism, there is also local tourism. To really get into local tourism, we need to prioritise it in our minds. The government also has to be very much interested in developing tourism, because they are the ones that would create the right policies to ensure tourism thrives in this part of the country.

Investors also have a role to play to make infrastructure available, after the government has made the policies.

The major change I am looking forward to is that we prioritize tourism, and begin to make a lot of noise about the tourism session in Nigeria. You realize that Nigerians actually discourage local tourism in Nigeria. They discourage foreigners from coming in and also discourage Nigerians from seeing other parts of Nigeria. And it is bad.

You would hardly see other citizens of other countries paint bad images of their own countries to discourage people from visiting. But here, the reverse is the case and it does us no good. I believe we need to wake up and consistently talk about the good sides of our home country and make more effort to travel our country, explore it, and share it with the world. That is how people would know that something is happening here. Maybe the eyes of others can open to want to explore Nigeria. There is a whole lot that needs to be done. Publicity. A lot of publicity.?

Recently, South Korea celebrated tourism in their country by offering select people all-expense paid trips to South Korea. These are structures that the government, the Ministry of Tourism put in place to develop tourism, to make people want to visit their country. Cos when creators go there, they would make content, which would very well promote the places that they visited during the stay.

Till next time,

Stay Comfy!