Nigeria’s newest online travel agency, Travelbeta, was launched about six weeks ago and has now raised a $2 million seed fund to enable it dominate the Nigerian travel industry. Earlier this month Ventures Africa reported that Travelbeta can be a major competitor for Africa’s current number one online travel agency, Wakanow, and it appears it is well on its way to do so.

According to Onyeka Akumah, the Co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of the company, Travelbeta was able to raise this seed fund through a group of Nigerian investors who believe they can dominate the Nigerian travel industry within the next three years.

It is also worthy to note that Travelbeta, which started by booking flights offline in July before moving into the online business space, has generated about $522,000 in only five months. Looking at the amount generated by the company, in addition to the fact that they were able to raise about $2 million, shows that the Nigerian travel industry has a lot of untapped potential

Available data from the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics reveals that 21 million Nigerians have travelled in and out of the country through airports in the last twelve months but only 300,000 of these flights were booked through online travel agencies.

This indicates that there is more than enough space for Nigerian travel agencies to dominate online in order to increase revenue from customer bookings. These agencies can aim to ensure that the number of Nigerians who book their flights on the internet would increase by over a 100 percent within the next year.

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