I met Abdalla on a tour in Zanzibar earlier this year. The calmest guide I had ever had, and the one who knew his home best. He showed me the island the way you show someone your own kitchen. No script, no rush, no show.
A few days in, I learned how little he actually kept from each tour. Hotel commissions ate most of it. The guests paid full price. The guide who did all the work took home a fraction.
“Don’t you have your own site?” I asked.
He did the math out loud. A website, hosting, marketing, payment systems. Too expensive to ever earn back. So he kept working through the hotels, and the hotels kept their margins. That is the deal for almost every guide on the island.
A few months later I got sick. The kind that forces a reset. I needed quiet, and work that meant something. He had dreamed his whole life of running his own business. We made a deal: he runs the tours, I run the platform, the deposit keeps the website alive, the rest goes straight to him. His first baby and his first website will arrive around the same time.
That is the whole model. You book direct with a 20% deposit. That deposit pays for this platform. The other 80% goes to your guide, in his hand, on the day. No hotel desk in between. No commission stack. Just you and someone who has lived Zanzibar his entire life.
When Abdalla is fully booked, his trusted friends step in. People he grew up with, guides he vouches for personally. Same island, same standard, same deal.
Marlies Lucy & Abdalla
Born in Stone Town, raised between the alleyways and the ocean. Abdalla has guided travellers across the island for years: spice farms, reefs, kitchens, history. The calmest man on the island, and soon the proudest. This platform is his first own business, arriving around the same time as his first child.
Ask him anything. He will probably answer with a story.
Marlies came to Zanzibar as a guest and left as a partner. From the Netherlands she builds and runs everything around the tours: this website, the bookings, the emails, the deposit that keeps it all alive.
The deal is simple. He runs the tours, she keeps the doors open, and nobody in between takes a cut.