Nigerian turn-key e-commerce solutions provider SlimTrader has launched a white label rewards scheme Mo’Rewardz Club, which aggregates more than 1,500 hotels and incorporates an add-on loyalty programme to reward guests and hotel staff for using the e-commerce platform.
Disrupt Africa reported in October SlimTrader received US$1 million investment from digital payments and commerce company Interswitch, allowing the startup to ramp up operations and expand its flagship product MoBiashara further into the hospitality sector.
The MoBiashara platform provides everything businesses need to sell their products and services directly to consumers worldwide. Clients range from airlines to hotels, with the product enhancing partners’ capabilities and presence while expanding their market reach.
Mo’Rewardz allows customers to be rewarded for their loyalty to either a hotel chain or a third party booking site, and, in contrast to traditional loyalty schemes, is brand and sales channel agnostic, allowing travellers and hotels to accrue points via any first or third party sellers that use the MoBiashara online reservation system.
These sellers include Trip Advisor, HotelNowNow, Lagos Oriental Hotel, Protea Hotels and Maison Fahrenheit Hotels. Guests are rewarded with points for each reservation, which can be used towards future reservations, to buy mobile airtime and pay bills, or can be cashed out by the guest.
Front desk staff receive loyalty points for creating reservations on the MoBiashara for Hotels Admin area and checking in guests with the system when guests arrive on the hotel’s premises.
SlimTrader said the model is the first of its kind globally and has been developed with the African hotel market in mind.
“Aggregating Africa’s fragmented network of hotels under one loyalty programme is a big step for the travel market. The launch of this new feature signifies, for us, the maturing of Africa’s hotel and travel sector, as we work more strategically with hotels large and small to deliver choices and incentives for a new class of traveller on the continent, who expects more from their travels,” said SlimTrader founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Femi Akinde.
“The travel loyalty industry is currently worth billions in the West, but has barely any visibility or travel market impact in Africa. Our Mo’Rewardz loyalty programme, as well as our seamless e-commerce reservation system, makes us the go-to platform for the sector, and with this new product launch for the MoBiashara platform, we expect to onboard thousands more hotels over the next 12 months, many of whom have, until now, been unable to activate a loyalty programme as they feel they are too small. We are uniting the Davids and the Goliaths of Africa’s growing hotel market, under one loyalty scheme that is mutually beneficial to both hotels and travellers.”
