The Business Hour sat down with the co-founder of the newly founded online hiking trail booking platform, Afritrails, Evan Sparks, on the impact the Covid-19 pandemic and lack of foreign travel has had on the almost fourth-month old startup and in what ways does the Easter period present businesses in the tourism sector with a window of opportunity to recover from the pandemic.

Afritrails was born in October 2019 following a trip by Sparks and his co-founder to the Kruger National Park. The trip unveiled the misinformation that existed around the availability of hiking trails. So they came up with the idea of aggregating different public hiking trails, privately owned reserves and tour operators on a central platform, making it easy for anyone to book a trail and overnight accommodation.

The story behind Afritrails is also one of hope, because the online platform was meant to be launched in March 2020, but then Covid-19 happened, pushing back the launch to mid-November 2020. Sparks says the pandemic bought the duo time to really work on the product and also do some market-related research to see how well the platform would be received. The duo also kept costs relatively low during the pandemic, allowing them to inject more funds into the development of the product.

He suggests that this is how startups should view the pandemic - as an opportunity to slow down, test their product and keep costs low. This approach has yielded some fruit for the Afritrail duo despite the absence of foreign travel in the country due to Covid-19.

On Tuesday, 30 March, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in his address, revealed that inter-provincial travel as well as access to parks and beaches would be permitted over the Easter long weekend, but urged South Africans to limit travel and observe health protocols