Coffeebeans Routes is a multi-award winning travel brand specialising in product development, route creation and SMME tourism business development.
Coffeebeans offers its own original creative and cultural tours in Cape Town, Johannesburg, Kigali and Nairobi, as well as tourism consulting services.
Our tourism development clients have included the EU, Open Africa, the City of Cape Town, and the Hout Bay Partnership. We have experience building unique tourism product in South Africa, Rwanda and Kenya.
Overview
The cornerstone of the Coffeebeans approach, from the outset in 2005, has been content development. We entered the tourism sector with a view to bringing storytelling techniques from other sectors to the tourism sector. We harness approaches from theatre, film-making, journalism and music, and apply them to the canvas of tourism.
Our Cape Town Jazz Safari, launched in 2005, was the first in a long line of successful experiences created using these techniques. As of 2022, the Cape Town Jazz Safari is the longest running music travel experience on the continent, having hosted thousands of people in the homes of jazz musicians in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Commissioned tourism development work
2020 City of Cape Town Tourism Mentorship project
In conjunction with Quick Project Management Solutions, Coffeebeans took the lead on a City of Cape Town project to assist 14 tourism entrepreneurs in Langa, Mamre and Atlantis to develop bankable business plans for their tourism ideas. The two month programme involved weekly virtual meetings with the entrepreneurs, following a four module curriculum created by Coffeebeans principal iain Harris
The Dwars River Escape Route
Coffeebeans was contracted by Open Africa, a tourism development NPO, with funding from the EU, to work with stakeholders in the Winelands towns of Pniel, Lanquedoc and Kylemore to create new tourism experiences and support the creation of new tourism businesses. The Escape Route had some 19 participants, both directly and indirectly involved in tourism. The experiences created are marketed and sold by Coffeebeans Routes. For more on the approach used, please click here.
2018 Hout Bay
The Hout Bay Partnership, Open Africa and the Hout Bay Heritage Association commissioned Coffeebeans to work with two tourism entrepreneurs, one in Hangberg and one in Imizamo Yethu, to mentor them through to graduation as tour guides, development of their tourism product ideas, and taking them to market.
Collaborative tourism development work
2018 The Colour of Wine Safari
The first cross-sector travel collaboration on the continent, bringing together the makers of a documentary film The Colour of Wine, the publishers of a book of the same title, and travel role-players to create a wine experience telling wine stories from a black point of view. Creating this experience required the capacity to build partnerships and negotiate agreements across sectors, to mentor wine entrepreneurs and wine-makers in participating in tourism in a very different way, and to market and present this content to the trade and media in compelling ways.
2019 Tour development in Nairobi and Kigali
In 2019 Coffeebeans entered into partnership with entrepreneurs in Nairobi and Kigali, to create new and unique travel experiences in those cities, growing the Coffeebeans approach into multiple countries. We created together some 8 experiences across these two cities, with ongoing mentorship of our partners there.
2022 and 2023. Tour development in Kampala and Addis Ababa
We are working with partners in Uganda and Ethiopia to develop unique urban travel experiences in Kampala and Addis Ababa.
Services
- Product development training
- Product development consulting
- Mentorship in the implantation phase of new products and routes
- Route development strategy, training, consulting and mentorship
- Tourism business plan development facilitation and mentorship
Contact
Get in touch for a consultation
harris@coffeebeansroutes.com
office +27218136140
