Local Egyptian Sets Up Online Travel Community to Bolster Tourism
By: Laila Sherif Said
Follow @LailaSherifS
Ten years ago, the founder of Nomads, what has now become biggest travel recommendation Facebook group in Egypt, would have been hanging off a cord attached to an airplane in mid-air, looking over Cairo’s dynamic skyline.
Now that he has also put snowboarding, kitesurfing, scuba diving, bungee-jumping and static-lining under his belt, Islam Sherif, 28, is not your average employee in a large company’s marketing sect.
Graduating with a degree in engineering from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology but currently in the marketing field, he hopes that managing Nomads full-time will be his final destination.
He started the closed group, Nomads, just three years ago, with only around 500 Facebook friends.
Since then, the group has amassed a following of over 10,000 members.
“My end in mind is to have a platform like TripAdvisor, but purely based on user-generated content. No articles, no ratings from certain entities. You would be just asking another traveler for a recommendation, a tip. And the human feel of it would be what makes it fly,” Sherif told The Caravan.
Spending three years of his childhood in Prague, Czech was his first language, but because of his passion for languages, he is also fluent in Spanish and basic in French.
His cellphone, GoPro and camera are all he needs to document his adventures, which include traveling to around 40 different cities.
With this drive for exploration, he started a traveling agency, where he organizes trips and gets paid for taking people on vacations.
When that idea proved too commonplace for his liking, he planned to start a recommendations-based website, offering customers packages and articles, but that did not quite work out either.
By then, Sherif had already founded the group on Facebook to offer his friends a real time travel-exclusive recommendation hub.
When he decided to expand the project, he had to urge his friends, one by one, to post questions and responses and to add their friends to increase the number of members, picking up the group’s activity rate and engagement statistics immediately.
“I love the spirit this community has raised… We are all treating each other as friends and we don’t even know each other,” member Ireni Wahib told The Caravan.
Nomads has reached out to travel agencies, booking sites and even travellers from around the world in an effort to contribute towards local tourism, both incoming and outgoing.
With hundreds of people added to the group every month, it has quickly made its way to popularity.
The “Nomads SWAT Team”, a group of experienced travellers advising on administrative decisions, now contribute to the group as well.
“I enjoy the general vibe of not just looking for recommendations but also sharing and viewing others’ stories and travel adventures to both motivate you and give you a sense of belonging,” traveller and group member Youssef Adib said.
Inspired by his love for extreme sports, Sherif developed a passion for rock climbing while on an organized rock climbing trip in the mountains of Railay Island in Thailand.
“I stayed there for two weeks, doing nothing but rock climbing and I was in complete ecstasy. This is when I knew I had to continue rockclimbing,” Sherif told The Caravan.
Upon returning to Egypt, he practiced his newfound hobby on the mountains of Dahab.
His frequent rock-climbing trips with foreign instructors living in Dahab sparked interest among the travel community, and in no time, he would organize expeditions for those interested.
This gave birth to Fingerlock, a series of workshops taught by international rock climbing instructors at Cairo’s Gold’s Gym and, occasionally, Dahab.
The name comes from a technique used in the sport, when one holds their body up with one finger.
Given its collaborations with major travel agencies, like Wild Guanabana and Destination 31, Nomads’ branching out brightens the future for its members and the team.
Yet to be launched, Nomads SOS will be a new and crucial service which will provide members with a list of locals living in different countries that one can reach out when help is needed; an initiative that would give nomads a sense of security on their travels.
The idea originated from, and is now run by, Sherif’s fiancee Mariam Galal.
“We reach out to expats and locals abroad who are interested in participating. It’s a global volunteer program. We will be announcing the SOS team globally probably very soon,” said Sherif.
“I’m working towards Nomads being the ultimate go-to recommendation engine for this certain community, reaching airlines and the major booking sites.”
The newest and most exciting project yet to be launched, ‘Like a Nomad’ will offer the subscribed members full-fledged reviews, guides and tips and tricks for various cities across the world, written by none other than the nomads living in the cities themselves.
Gallery: Nomads on the Move
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