Tripitaca (re-branded as Triply) started business in the CEO mother’s house, but today supports more than 2300 guesthouses across Kenya by streamlining their operations and helping them grow.
Peter Wachira is the CEO of Tripitaca.
In 2019, at the age of 22, he launched his own agency to manage small guesthouses in Kenya, and in two short years, he was handling over 1,000 Airbnb-type guest houses across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
While at it, Peter realised how difficult and splintered it could be to run a guesthouse, for some of the following reasons:
– Bookings were made on paper or Excel sheets at best, therefore making double bookings a huge problem
– Keeping track of cash was fraught with irregularities, and mobile payments were inefficient
– Travel being seasonal, guesthouses were forced to deal with erratic and unreliable cashflow
In 2021, Wachira formally launched Tripitaca with co-founders, Collins Muthinja and Collins Kariuki, and their goal was to fix these problems for vacation property owners, using AI.
Today, Tripicata is tackling difficult issues for African travel brands, such as helping them list off-the-grid rentals that are great for local tourism (a niche that more established brands such as Airbnb were not strong on). Peter and his team are also able to assist hospitality companies in setting up agile bookings through popular platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook groups, and Instagram.
The result? Tripitaca’s attempt to digitise the ‘Offline Accommodation’ industry across Africa has earned them the trust to manage the operations of over 2,000 guest house operators.