#ENTER23

Martijn Mellaart

Chief Operating Officer of e.DMC.

Speaker

Martijn Mellaart

Chief Operating Officer of e.DMC.

Born in Holland, Martijn grew up in West Africa (Niger, Togo and Burkina Faso) before returning to the Netherlands to study marketing. After losing his heart to Africa he then left his local hospitality job to pursue his dream. In 1998 he opened Uitkyk Holidays, a Destination Management Company specialising in Southern Africa, and after four short years launched Mozambique Voyages in 2002. It didn’t take long for him to pioneer the untouched tropical destination, and he earned his reputation as a market leader.

Mozambique Voyages was sold to Tourvest Destination Management in February 2019, and Martijn joined the company as COO for their new business unit Sense of Oceans, which launched at Indaba 2019. After having successfully run the specialised medium-sized DMC for 20 years, Martijn embraced the opportunity for change within Southern Africa’s largest diversified travel management business.

During the Covid-19 lockdown period, Martijn took on the role of Sales and Product Synergies Director for the group, with the task of developing new business units. He soon identified an opportunity in the market, which served the dual purpose of opening up a new revenue stream while at the same time serving the broader Southern African tourism industry in its time of crisis. In the face of near financial devastation, many DMCs were under threat of closure, having had to drastically cut back on their operating expenses with zero revenue for up to 5 months.

Martijn recognised the gap in the poor post-Covid-19 trading climate, where DMCs could benefit from a central procurement and outsourced Enterprise Management Platform, which would dramatically reduce their overheads while enhancing their service levels within their source markets.

It took Martijn 6 months to design the model. This passion project drew on all of his experience gained over two decades, enabling him to make a difference in the Southern African inbound tourism industry that he lost his heart to so long ago.