Meet Thomas Müller, founder of rainmaker.travel, a social enterprise dedicated to empowering local tourism businesses through digital innovation. Recognising the challenges of small, independent hospitality providers, Thomas is on a mission to democratise digital access and foster economic sustainability.

In this interview, Thomas reveals how rainmaker.travel helps businesses reclaim their digital presence, increase direct bookings, and reduce reliance on foreign online travel agents (OTAs). Using the 5 Stages of Success and Destination.360, they boost visibility, streamline operations, and keep more tourism revenue in local communities.

Thomas, what inspired you to start rainmaker.travel as a social enterprise, and how does it promote sustainable tourism in the digital space?

The inspiration behind founding rainmaker.travel stemmed from a deep-seated passion for fostering sustainable tourism that truly benefits local communities. This is especially relevant in Africa and other low- and middle-income destinations, where tourism has the mandate to create prosperity. Prosperity through education, youth and women development and employment.

During my extensive experience in the hospitality and tourism sectors, I observed a troubling trend. Dominant foreign OTAs took a large share of tourism revenue, leaving local businesses with reduced returns. This not only undermined the economic sustainability of these mainly small, medium and independent businesses but also hindered the broader sustainable development of their communities.

By establishing rainmaker.travel as a social enterprise, our mission is to democratise digital technology, making it inclusively accessible and beneficial for small to medium-sized hospitality providers or entire destinations.

Our vision aligns with promoting sustainable tourism by empowering these businesses to regain control over their digital presence, visibility, and distribution channels. This empowerment enables them to attract direct bookings, thereby retaining 100% of the revenue within the destination.

In essence, we aim to create a more equitable tourism ecosystem where local businesses thrive, and communities prosper. We keep tourism spend local, restoring the economic foundation vital for ecological, cultural, and social sustainability. Without this foundation, a sustainable and common good driven tourism development has become at least challenging, if not impossible.

How does rainmaker.travel support small and independent hotels to operate sustainably and reduce their reliance on larger booking platforms?

rainmaker.travel offers a comprehensive suite of digital tools and services tailored specifically for small and independent hospitality and tourism businesses as an all-in-One 360° solution that is easy to use and manage.

Our award-winning 5 Stages of Success is a holistic platform and strategy that guides hospitality and tourism businesses and entire destinations through a seamless digital transformation:

Visibility | We ensure that hotels have consistent and accurate information across multiple platforms, enhancing their search engine optimization (SEO) and increasing online visibility. This generates some 20%+ more visitors to their websites.

Website | We provide user-friendly, responsive best practice websites that align with guest behaviours, the traveller mental model and facilitating some 15%+ more seamless and sustainable direct bookings and migrating about 10%+ of otherwise non-sustainable OTA bookings.

Reputation | We provide tools to actively manage online reviews, leveraging AI-driven responses to build and maintain trust with potential guests, which drives some 10%+ more direct bookings through the trust created.

Marketing & Advertising | We streamline social media, email marketing and digital advertising efforts, enabling hotels to effectively gain more reach and engage with their target audiences which instantly leads to more visitors to their websites.

Management & Sales | We provide and integrate booking engines, payment systems, and channel managers to optimise operations and revenue management. We also provide a comprehensive competitive analysis, redefinition of the pricing and distribution strategy to gain more occupancy and a much better average daily room rate (ADR) of some 20% at least.

By implementing these stages, hospitality and tourism businesses can enhance their digital presence, attract more direct bookings, and significantly reduce their dependence on market dominating foreign OTA and DMC platforms. This not only improves their profitability but also contributes to their long-term sustainability and resilience.

rainmaker.travel aims to keep more tourism revenue within destinations. Could you share how your 5 Stages of Success and the Destination.360 approach fosters responsible tourism and uniquely benefits local hospitality providers?

rainmaker.travel’s 5 Stages of Success and Destination.360 empower local hospitality providers and Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) to strengthen their digital capabilities and drive responsible tourism.

By improving visibility, optimising websites for direct bookings, actively managing reputations, streamlining marketing efforts, and integrating efficient hotel and tourism business management systems, we enable these businesses to attract and secure bookings directly from their guests.

For Destinations the holistic Destination CRM, the Destination Portal, Destination Market Intelligence Dashboard and the Destination App and Digital GuestCard provides a single point of truth platform, seamlessly integrated with the 5 Stages of Success to manage all respective hospitality and tourism businesses within the destination in one single open data platform.

This not only increases the revenue retained by local hospitality and tourism providers but also strengthens their relationship with guests, leading to more personalised and authentic experiences.

By reducing reliance on foreign and unsustainable booking platforms (OTAs), more tourism revenue stays within the destination, direct bookings ensure 100% of travel spend goes to local businesses and communities.

Therefore we are heavily contributing to the economic sustainability of local communities. This holistic approach ensures that sustainable and common good tourism development benefits those who are integral to the destination’s unique character and appeal.

How does rainmaker.travel balance the drive for digital innovation with a commitment to environmental responsibility in supporting tourism businesses?

At rainmaker.travel, we recognize that digital innovation and environmental responsibility are not mutually exclusive but instead synergistic and interdependent. By empowering hospitality and tourism providers and destinations with an efficient digital transformation program, we reduce the need for physical resources associated with traditional marketing and operations, such as printed materials and extensive travel for promotional activities.

By restoring and strengthening the economic sustainability of hospitality and tourism businesses, or even entire destinations, we are rebuilding the foundation necessary to support other aspects of sustainability, including ecological, social, and cultural dimensions.

Such projects would not be possible without the means and resources provided by the foundation of economic sustainability. So in fact, we enable businesses and destinations to transform to a sustainable and common good tourism development which the OTA mainly have removed through their defective and non sustainable value chain.

In what ways does rainmaker.travel contribute to economic sustainability within local communities, particularly through partnerships with hotels?

rainmaker.travel contributes to economic sustainability by equipping local hospitality and tourism providers with the tools, knowledge and extensive transformation support necessary to attract and manage direct bookings.

By reducing dependency on foreign OTAs, businesses can retain a larger share of their revenue, which in turn can be reinvested into the local economy and sustainable projects of the businesses.

Our partnerships extend beyond providing digital tools; we offer training, masterclasses, workshops and support to help hotels and destinations effectively utilise these resources and manage the digital transformation successfully. This capacity-building approach ensures that local businesses are not only beneficiaries but active participants in their economic development and that the digital transformation project remains self sustainable at all times. By strengthening the financial health of individual businesses, we contribute to the overall economic sustainability of the communities they operate within.

How will rainmaker.travel scale its impact and how will digital solutions shape the future of responsible tourism?

As we look to the future, rainmaker.travel aims to scale its impact by expanding our services to more destinations and hospitality and tourism providers globally. We plan to enhance our platform with advanced features, such as even more AI-driven analytics and personalised marketing tools, to further empower our partners. We are already at the forefront of seamlessly integrated AI features and functions, which is way above what most people see today with ChatGPT or such.

Digital solutions shape the future of responsible, sustainable tourism. They enable greater transparency, facilitate sustainable practices, and foster direct connections between travellers and local businesses. By leveraging digital innovation, we can create a tourism ecosystem that is equitable, sustainable, and enriching for both travellers and the communities they visit.

We believe that there is no disruption to be expected in the legacy OTA Business to Consumer (B2C) value chain anymore since the OTA are capturing their market share, running into an “innovator’s dilemma” issue while the hurdle for new start-ups in this segment is so high in terms of market entry cost, that it is very unlikely that VCs (venture capital companies) will invest in such risky ventures.

Instead, we believe that our 360° digital transformation approach will enable destinations and their hospitality and tourism businesses to regain control and create sustainable and beneficial vertically integrated B2B2C (Business to Business to Consumer) business models along the long tail value chain. Our platform is at  the very forefront to enable destinations and hospitality and tourism businesses to do just this.

Thank you, Thomas!

Connect with Thomas on LinkedIn or find out more about rainmaker.travel here. If you enjoyed our interview with Thomas, please share it and spread the word about sustainability and responsible travel.

Thomas has been featured because he has been peer nominated for our community of sustainable tourism impact makers. We count over 400 trailblazers around the world (meet them here).