Pulse Africa builds trust through 14 years with Wetu

For Bronwen Dearham at Pulse Africa, no two trips look the same. Every itinerary is built from scratch, shaped around a traveller who has usually arrived through referral or is a loyal customer who has come back for more.

"Every part of Pulse Africa's service offering is tailor made for the client, from when people arrive to the time they leave," she says. Pulse Africa focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, and a lot of its business comes from repeat clients or word of mouth. That kind of trust can’t be made from slapping together templates, but from getting the detail right, every time.

Fourteen years, and still finding new value

Bronwen has worked with Wetu since 2012. Why has she stayed so long?

"It's really easy to use. Wetu's platform is user-friendly. It's very easy to train somebody to use it. Since we started using WETU, we have trained (including myself) 21 staff members to use the platform, and the majority of these are/were consultants.

You can have someone start with you, and they can even start building an itinerary with just understanding the basics. And then the longer you use it, the more you start to use it, because there's a lot of features to discover as you progress."

For a small, agile team, that kind of onboarding allows new team members to get up to speed quickly, while still giving them room to grow into the platform's deeper features over time.

Less typing, more selling

Before Wetu, building an itinerary meant typing it all out by hand and that itinerary would need constant updates. Now, operators are finding that supplier content is taking care of itself.

Wetu has saved a lot of time, as it also keeps supplier content current. When a camp updates their images or details, the supplier does that themselves, so it's not on us to go and do it."

The time saved goes straight back into client relationships, and she says that Wetu has become a savvy sales tool too. "You can send the client the link, and when they open up the itinerary, you get a notification. That's a really, really good sales tool for us."

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A feature she wasn't using (until she was)

Not every valuable feature gets adopted on day one. For Bronwen, it was a conversation with the Wetu team that unlocked a new way of working.

"The calendar feature, for example, is very useful for when we track our client’s travels. In our emergency folders, we use the feature of changing the status to booked, and from that you can see which clients are travelling when, and it's easier to make a spreadsheet for everyone to see who's travelling and who needs to be on emergency duty."

Moments that it became personal

Ask Bronwen for a standout Wetu moment, and she instinctively goes straight to a story about one family.

One of their children was sick before a trip, and no one was sure travel was still possible. When Bronwen spoke to the father, he mentioned one thing: his son loved leopards. So when she sent the family their next itinerary update, she'd added something extra: a video from the camp of a real leopard sighting, waiting for them.

"He really loved it," Bronwen says. It's a small edit to a document. For that family, it was proof someone had been listening.

Wetu’s itineraries can hold routes, and a myriad of reasons to want to go on these adventures.

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Support that finds a way

Fourteen years with any platform means fourteen years of asking for help, too. Bronwen says the Wetu team has earned her trust through a multitude of conversations.

"Everyone is really receptive when you go through and you have a problem. What I like is it's never, ‘No, we can't do it’, but more of a ‘We are working on that for the future.’ They take the ideas on board, especially when you need help with something and you say, ‘I thought I could do this, but I can't’, then they will always find a way to help you do it."

From telex to WhatsApp, and everything in between

With 35 years in luxury travel, Bronwen has watched the industry change shape entirely, and Wetu's travel app has kept pace with it.

"When I started in travel, the best way to communicate with operations was by telex machine. Now it's all email, and we've even moved to WhatsApp. That travel app is really amazing [TravelKey]. They can download it and have everything they need on their phone. We used to send out travel packs, pages and pages of information. Now it's all just one app on your phone."

What's next?

Bronwen has been (and hopefully will continue to be) a long-standing client. She's watching where Wetu goes next, and she likes what she sees.

You guys are always changing things, and it's always positive. With AI coming into everything, and Wetu growing with tools like the dashboard, where you can save client details and notes, I think there's more development coming. I'm really looking forward to that. It's going to help us work smarter, increase our efficiency, and reduce our admin time."

Her advice to any operator still on the fence? "Easy to use, always accessible, easy to train somebody to use. It's like any other system. The more you put into it, the more it's going to give you."

About Pulse Africa

Pulse Africa is a tailor-made tour operator specialising in sub-Saharan Africa and the Indian Ocean islands, built on repeat clients and referrals earned over 35 years in luxury travel.

Join Wetu and put world-class travel content to work in your itineraries!

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