After testing Novic Flights with seven agencies, I stepped back to look at the bigger picture. What systems are already out there? What can African agencies actually access and afford? And where is the real gap?
This is an honest breakdown. I am not going to trash these platforms to make our product look better. They do things we cannot do. But they also leave a massive gap that nobody is filling.
The Global Giants: Travelport and Amadeus
Travelport and Amadeus are the backbone of global travel booking. They connect to hundreds of airlines, handle complex multi-segment itineraries, manage ticketing, and integrate with hotel and car rental systems. If you book a flight through a major agency anywhere in the world, chances are it went through one of these systems.
What they do well: everything. Seriously. These are mature platforms built over decades with massive engineering teams. Flight search, pricing, booking, ticketing, refunds, schedule changes — they handle it all.
What they cost: this is where it breaks down for the African market. Licensing fees, terminal costs, training requirements, and minimum booking volumes make these systems realistic only for large agencies or consolidators. A mid-size agency in Kampala doing 30 or less bookings a month simply cannot justify the investment.
Accessibility: several agencies in East Africa do access these systems, usually through consolidator relationships. But they are using them as intermediaries, not as direct subscribers. The power of the system is available, but filtered through another layer.
Book Your Voyage and Regional Alternatives
Book Your Voyage and similar platforms have emerged as alternatives targeting smaller agencies. They offer web-based interfaces without the heavy infrastructure requirements of Travelport or Amadeus.
What they do well: lower barrier to entry, simpler interfaces, and pricing models that work for smaller operations.
Where they fall short: carrier coverage in East Africa is limited. If your primary routes are on regional carriers like Badr Airlines or Tarco Aviation, coverage gets thin. These platforms work best for agencies selling major international routes on large carriers.
The Gap Nobody Is Filling
Here is what I see after spending months in this market and testing with real agencies.
The global systems are too expensive and complex for small African agencies. The regional alternatives do not cover the carriers and routes that matter most to the East African market. And the agencies themselves are stuck with manual processes not because they want to be, but because nothing available fits their reality.
The gap is not just about price. It is about fit.
A booking system built for agencies doing hundreds of international bookings per day on Star Alliance carriers is a different product from what an agency in Kampala needs to manage 30 monthly bookings on regional airlines serving Khartoum, Juba, and Jeddah.
This gap is what we set out to fill with Novic Flights. Whether we succeeded at the right time is a different story — one I will tell in the next post.
