OUR FOUNDER OF THE WEEK- Every Tuesday, Founder of the Week looks at how a successful member of Egypt’s startup community got their big break, asks about their experiences running a business, and gets their advice for budding entrepreneurs. Speaking to us this week is Omar Wahba (LinkedIn), founder and CEO of Anchor.

My name is Omar Wahba, and I’m the founder and CEO of Anchor, a travel agency that specializes in adventure travel. We offer our clients curated travel experiences with activities that explore the whole country, whether on land or by boat. We’re not here to just book flights or your hotels, we want to maximize travelers’ experience of each country to make it stand out.

I graduated from AUC with a degree in business finance and international business, but a huge part of my academic experience was at Semester at Sea. I took a gap semester at AUC and attended Semester at Sea, a four-month program where you live on a boat and travel the world while you attend courses taught by Colorado State University. Every week I was in a different country — we traveled to 13 different countries in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America. It was the most impactful period of my academic career.

We’re a family of travelers. I was interested in traveling even before Semester at Sea. My parents run Tutankhamun Tours, a company that’s been around since 1972 and they love to travel, so it’s been in my blood since I was born. I used to travel for fun with friends, and because I played water polo competitively, we would also travel every six months to compete. All of these experiences made me very passionate about traveling.

Entering the market was easy for me given my background, but it took time for people to know who we are and why they should travel with us. Of course, our friends and immediate social circles knew us off the bat, but widening that horizon and establishing ourselves took more time. The most important aspect to our growth was word of mouth. I still believe that it’s the strongest marketing tool at our disposal, especially in Egypt. Even if you don’t have social media, if people have a good experience with you, that’s your advertisement.

What sets us apart from other agencies is that all of us at Anchor are experienced travelers. I’ve personally been to 84 countries. We don’t plan a trip for our clients unless we know the place well and have experienced the country first-hand. We go to each country and study it very well. If we want to offer trips to Japan, we go there and explore it for ourselves. What activities can we offer here? What are the hidden gems that will set our trip apart from someone else’s?

If I could change anything about the industry, I would change the culture around travel. People are used to traveling within their comfort zones. They don’t want to gamble by traveling to new places and trying new things, even though they might be missing out on better experiences. Traveling should be about exploring, about adventure.

In five years, I want Anchor to be the go-to for anyone who wants a good travel experience. We want people’s thought process right after “We want to go on a trip” to be “Let’s check out what trips Anchor has organized this month.” And at that point, we intend to be launching two trips a month. On top of that, we want to be steadily working alongside organizations. We already organize trips for 15 international schools, but I want us to cross the 20 school mark by then.

The recent economic challenges almost pushed us off course. I founded Anchor in 2018, and by the time we had landed on our feet, covid hit. Travel was the most affected industry, and it was the last to recover. And then came the currency devaluation. People, especially our target demographic, weren’t thinking about travel — they were worried about being able to buy a car, buying a house, and even just buying groceries or paying EGP 2k every time they went out to eat.

But if I learned one thing from these obstacles, it was how to pivot on the fly. It’s the most important part of starting a business, but especially in the travel industry. The pandemic, travel restrictions, and currency devaluations are why we started offering island hopping trips in Egypt. Before the pandemic, these islands didn’t even exist on our radar. But now it’s a trendy and fun trip to take, even after some of these issues have dissipated.

You can’t survive in the travel industry without learning to adapt at the drop of a hat. You could organize the trip only for the flight to be canceled last minute. You have to adapt, and you have to respond quickly. You need the flexibility to do it quickly. The industry is about constant crisis management. You may feel like you’ve hit a wall, but a dead end is never a dead end. It’s not an option. You need to find a solution.

But at the end of a trip, you get messages from people thanking you, and it makes it worth it. It’s rewarding to see people happy, and knowing that your hard work is paying off not only in the satisfaction of your current clients, but also in interest from future ones.

Tags: