In the era of 'AirBnb' and 'Uber' – enterprises that economists classify as part of the 'sharing economy' – there are travel sites that offer a functionality that is mostly based on online platforms to create spaces for selling services or products. These enterprises aim to connect businesses with market participants, not necessarily through physical activity, and of course this way of doing business is becoming more and more attractive to creative young people, and is helping them to find the innovative ideas that will fill the gaps in their everyday lives. And the guys who are the subject of this article are among these creative young adults. Raised and educated in Switzerland and Germany, they are working hard to impress the world with a very interesting and cool idea named 'Locamba'.
Locamba is an online platform which connects tourists with locals, and it is based upon a very simple philosophy: “Tourists will enjoy and experience the place they visit as locals, by seeing all the must-see attractions, and tasting the best food and drinks of that place, while the locals – who are referred as ‘Ambassadors’ – will have the opportunity to present the best of their city, and earn some pocket money for the service they offer”. And of course everyone is curious about the cool-simple-cute name from which it is derived, and YES, it’s an abbreviation of two basic words “Local Ambassadors”.
Both Visar and Bajram, the guys behind this idea, are two Albanian immigrants from eastern Kosova who moved to live in Switzerland decades ago, and they found it, they got the education they dreamed about, they worked hard for the jobs that made them possible to have a good life, and if they the ones to follow world-wide known entrepreneurs who as well are/were migrants that moved to live in developed countries for the basic reason of having a better life, and ended up by creating enterprises that would change the lives of people’s around the world, all we have to do is wait and see.
Visar: “The concept of our platform is to be a one-stop-shop for tourists and travelers as well a meeting point between tourists and companies/organizations that offer services related to tourism, a concept implemented on an online platform where the crucial role belongs to the ‘Local Ambassadors/Local Guides’ who create a profile where they present their perspective on their city. There are three different profiles, one for free while for the two others there’s a specific fee to be paid annually, and the difference between these accounts is the amount of space they have, and the ranking plus the visibility of any given account in the platform.”
So far, their idea is technically functional, and slowly and methodically they are working to recruit as many local ambassadors as possible, meanwhile increasing the number of users. Locamba currently is focused specifically on a specific market, which is the German-speaking part of Europe (Switzerland, Germany, and Austria), for the simple reason that it’s geographically more easily accessible for them as a team, and has the benefit of a shared language, but they are aiming high and want to be the next big global platform that changes the lives of people around the world for the better.
Bajram: “Honestly, even though it may sound like a cliché, it started with us facing the difficulty of having real local experiences while we were traveling. We are friends, and in recent years we have been traveling quite often, and one day when we were sharing our experiences with each other we came to the conclusion that there could be more to experience and enjoy in the places we travel to, and without any doubt this could happen through the real experiences of local people, and this was the ‘CLICK’ in our brains, we had the idea and we started to work on it, found the partners who could pull all our thoughts together in one place which now is Locamba, and this scheme is 100% is financed from our personal savings, it’s been an idea for a start-up that we had been looking to find for a long time, and the moment we found it, we didn’t want to let it go for any reason.”
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