Startup Story
For travellers who want to visit Cape Verde for vacations or business, help is at hand thanks to the team at Resermar Reservas Online, the country’s first online integrated booking platform co-founded by Leidimara Ramos. This one-stop-shop platform assists not only visitors, but also those smaller suppliers on Cape Verde who want to connect with potential new customers.
LoA found out more about this innovative business from co-founder Leidemara Ramos.
What does your company do?
Resermar Reservas Online is a Cape Verdean integrated booking platform launched in 2018 with the mission of facilitating and modernizing the services offered by companies through online reservations. With a wide range of partners, we are able to facilitate privileged access to the whole country with air and sea tickets, land transfers, small shipments at any point, personalized vacation itineraries, medical consultations, accommodation, and many more services. Our goal is to ensuring their quality and security.
“We are able to facilitate privileged access to the whole country with air and sea tickets, land transfers, small shipments at any point, personalized vacation itineraries, medical consultations, accommodation, and many more services.”
What inspired you to start your company?
Cape Verde is an archipelagic country, and it has many symmetries, many small service providers and suppliers in the peripheral areas. As such, it does not have the power to reach large markets or large population cities, which impoverishes rural and peripheral communities. Resermar Reservas Online is helping to bridge these distances between large and small operators in a bidirectional way, offering access to large supplier and operator companies, while offering visibility and presence to small suppliers and providers in the most important markets.
What makes your business, service or product special?
Without leaving home, it is possible to book your service package and let Resermar take care of the rest. With a wide range of partners, we are able to facilitate the needs of our clients from air and sea tickets, personalized vacation itineraries to medical consultations. We consider special the fact that we have created a healthy commercial environment where clients, consumers and users, can access a range of information and services. This flow of information and value in all directions, stimulates the level of production and the quality of the stakeholders providing the services, while at the same time generating value in the communities, both through the exchange of experiences and knowledge, as well as through competitiveness and enrichment.
“Without leaving home, it is possible to book your service package and let Resermar take care of the rest.”
“Our medium-term plans are to expand to the remaining islands of the country and increase our offerings.”
Tell us a little about your team
Our team is formed mainly by women with experience in different areas, and some with an impressive local market dominance. Attached to this is a range of highly qualified partners and leaders in specialist services, offering us strength, solidity and confidence in the marketplace.
Share a little about your entrepreneurial journey. And, do you come from an entrepreneurial background?
Most of us come from the commercial sector and from companies where we have learned a lot, although we have been limited in terms of decision making and professional growth. Some of us have had our goals and dreams hampered by mediocre bosses with power. At Resermar, being a multi-level multi-platform. we have found the ideal environment to fulfill our potential.
What are your future plans and aspirations for your company?
Our medium-term plans are to expand to the remaining islands of the country and increase our offerings. In the long term, we want to internationalize our offerings which will allow us to reach distant markets.
“In the long term, we want to internationalize our offerings which will allow us to reach distant markets.”
What gives you the most satisfaction being an entrepreneur?
Our company is a family, which grows and strengthens itself, and this expands our horizons constantly. It allows us to change people's lives for good, and we want happy and prosperous people. I believe that our work is in line with that goal.
What's the biggest piece of advice you can give to other women looking to start-up?
Understand that the path is better when we build a team, and that when the team becomes strong, we can survive almost anything.
Contact or follow Resermar Reservas Online
WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | EMAIL direcao@resermar.cv
Why LoA loves it….
Being the first to market is always a special achievement for any woman entrepreneur, because it is proof of seeing an opportunity or a gap and building a solution to address that need. In Cape Verde, Leidemara Ramos and her co-founders at Resermar Reservas Online are using the power of technology to bridge the gap between travellers and business people wishing to visit the country, and the local suppliers who are open for that business. It is a testament to the power of digital connectivity and innovation that this platform is bringing solutions to both visitors and local business owners alike. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo of Lionesses of Africa