Favour Onyeoziri is the founder of wakawaka.ng, with a mission to connect people to exciting and life-enriching travel experiences. Under his leadership, wakawaka.ng has grown into one of the leading travel agencies in Nigeria with tour offerings in over 50 countries including Dubai, Benin Republic, and other tourism sites across the world.

Being one of the foremost tour agencies in Nigeria, we grabbed some time to ask Favour about how their global travel company is surviving the pandemic, how wakawaka.ng works, and the importance of engaging your customers even if they are not purchasing right now.

Hi Favour, thanks for joining us! To get started, could you tell us how you came up with the idea for wakawaka tourism?

Wakawaka.NG was borne out of my passion for traveling and seeing new places especially tourist attractions. Eventually this passion metamorphosed into a general love for outdoor life. I decided that it would be a great idea to create opportunities for people to see and experience the places I visit, hence the birth of wakawaka.ng which has two core aspects, the first being the use of audio-visual content to showcase cities and sights to people, while the other is the touring aspect which gives people the opportunity to actually visit these places.

At what point did it become a full-time project, and how did you make the leap into full-time entrepreneur? How did you find work/life balance?

Truth is it’s still not a full-time project, I have other businesses I’m into. I was going to hire a team for Wakawaka.ng this year, but COVID-19 happened and everything had to be put on hold. Overseeing the Digital Marketing activities at rouvafe-digital.com still remains my full-time job for now.

As for being a full-time Entrepreneur, making that decision three years ago was quite easy. I was earning a salary that barely met my basic needs, additionally, I had my Parent’s house and good to always go back to every day. So the seeming benefits attached to quitting my job and becoming a full-time Entrepreneur greatly outweighed the risks at that time. If it was now, I’d have had to think twice, if not thrice as I have a lot more responsibilities now.

With regards to work-life balance, everything I call work are things I’m passionate about. I’ve learned to monetize my passions, so work is life for me. I enjoy doing my work and I love the process and places it takes me to. If I was doing some other work, the things I do as work now would have been the fun things I’d love to do during my leave or after work.

How does Wakawaka tourism work, exactly?

Wakawaka.NG Travels and Tours is a travel content brand whose sole objective is to encourage people to explore the outdoors more. We do this through two main channels, the first is via the use of travel content (pictures, videos, blogposts etc) to give people a feel of the outdoors and encourage them to explore more. The other channel is through our regular travels and tours, this way we actually afford people the opportunity to come outdoors by taking the stress of planning and logistics associated with traveling off their backs.

With the obvious restrictions due to coronavirus, the tourism and travel industries are suffering. How is Wakawaka Tourism managing? What do you see coming in the medium-term?

The travel industry is perhaps the worst-hit by the pandemic. However with the current easing out of domestic lockdowns and other restrictions, we have decided to focus primarily on organizing local getaways and mini-experiences (kayaking, Go-karting, paint-baling, Hangouts, Games Nights, etc for people. This way we still make sure people get to explore safely while also keeping the the brand afloat.

A lot of people are skeptical about traveling due to funds, how can you assure them that they do not have to break the bank to have a nice time?

Generally, we make sure our prices are very affordable, because for us it is not just about profits, it’s about our vision to get more young people to explore. We also understand that our primary demographic which is young people may not be very financially buoyant, therefore we factor in all of these into our pricing. For the meantime, pending when international travel returns to normal, we are largely focused on local getaways and mini-experiences which do not cost much.

Why is it important to travel, and how can we as a nation imbibe the culture of tourism within the country?

Traveling has numerous benefits attached to it, the first being the fact that it opens you up to a lot more than you’d have ever known. It introduces you to new people, cultures, languages, ideals. It gives you a new perspective into life and how it should be lived. Traveling makes you a better more tolerant person, enriches you with more experiences and makes you a better storyteller. For me, traveling is also therapeutic, it helps me leave my worries behind and focus on what is ahead. I’ve seen people say traveling helps them with managing depression. The truth about traveling is that you’d never know how beneficial it is, until you pack your bags and hit the road.

As a nation there are many barriers to tourism, they range from the fact that we have very few well-maintained destinations to the fact that the economy does not make room for extra cash for travel. For someone who is still trying to sort out their basic needs, traveling is a luxury. So as Nigerians we need to learn to embrace travel in-spite of the many obstacles. We need to make a conscious decision to enjoy the benefits of traveling, let’s not leave it to the rich alone. For Nigeria especially, Tourism will foster a lot of ethnic and religious tolerance. It will help demystify a lot of the biases that have kept us at loggerheads and in the enmity of one another.

Favour Onyeoziri is the founder of wakawaka.ng, a travel brand focused on encouraging more young Nigerians to explore the world around them despite the odds. You can connect with him on Instagram @Rouvafe and Twitter @iamrouvafe