The first useful thing LekkeSlaap sold was not a room. It was relief. South Africans trying to book a guesthouse, farm cottage or family stopover in the late 2000s often found a web full of thin directories, unanswered questions and payment friction. Marcel van de Ghinste and Jonathan Womersley saw the gap, put R12,000 into a company, found space in a garage and began phoning accommodation owners. In September 2009, their original platform, TravelGround, opened with roughly 300 establishments. Four years later they launched an Afrikaans sister brand with a name that sounded less like software and more like something a relative might say at bedtime: LekkeSlaap.
That name is a small piece of product strategy. “Lekke” is clipped from the Afrikaans lekker - enjoyable, pleasant, good. In jy moet lekker slaap, it means sleep well. LekkeSlaap began as South Africa’s first Afrikaans leisure-accommodation booking platform, but the border around the audience did not hold. English speakers wanted the brand too. What looked like a language niche became a mark of local recognition.
Today, parent company Tripco describes LekkeSlaap as its flagship and says the marketplace has matched millions of guests with more than 38,000 properties. It spans holiday homes, B&Bs, hotels, lodges, resorts and campsites. Its app has passed 500,000 downloads on Google Play. Those figures put it in the serious middle of online travel: much smaller than the global platforms, but large enough to shape how a national market books.
01 / The productThe search box has a human behind it
The customer is usually solving an ordinary but high-anxiety problem. A family needs six beds near the beach. A sales rep needs secure parking and Wi-Fi between two long drives. A couple wants a cabin in the Cederberg, but also wants to know whether the road will punish a hatchback. Global inventory helps with the first half of those questions. Local context closes the booking.
LekkeSlaap’s product bundles the expected machinery - destination search, filters, live availability, reviews, secure checkout and a mobile app - with details tuned to the market. Hosts are verified. Prices are presented without a surprise platform surcharge at the end. Guests can pay by card, EFT and other familiar options. The platform advertises a dedicated travel agent for every guest, available every day of the year until midnight.
“Our role is to connect local and international guests with the very best this region has to offer, while giving hosts the visibility and technology they need to thrive.”Frans Joubert, Tripco CEO
That human layer is easy to dismiss as old-fashioned until a host cancels, a payment stalls or a policy reads differently at 10 p.m. Software is good at compressing choices. People are good at absorbing uncertainty. LekkeSlaap places both in the same service, which helps explain why customer support appears so prominently in its public pitch.
The checkout itself is still being tuned. A 2026 redesign moved pricing and cancellation information earlier, clarified the confirmation step and put more reassurance beside payment on mobile. These are small changes with marketplace consequences: fewer surprises for the guest, fewer avoidable questions for support and a cleaner handoff to the host.
02 / The marketplaceTrust has to work in two directions
Travellers are only one customer. On the other side are thousands of small hospitality businesses: guesthouse operators, lodge managers, campsite owners and people turning a second home into income. Many do not have a hotel chain’s marketing budget, payments team or reservation software. LekkeSlaap gives them distribution and booking infrastructure, then takes booking-related commission. An early company post named a 15 percent rate; the current standard rate is not publicly posted.
The model lives or dies by a familiar marketplace loop. More properties make search useful. More guests make listing worthwhile. Reviews and verification make unfamiliar hosts bookable. Completed bookings produce more reviews. The difficult work is less glamorous than the loop diagram: checking supply, keeping calendars accurate, handling payouts and answering phones when the neat digital path breaks.
Independent stays gain searchable visibility.
Verification, reviews and support reduce doubt.
Local discovery and rewards bring bookings back.
Hosts earn, improve and keep inventory active.
Tripco’s larger business adds another layer. Its accommodation technology has supported partner travel products for organisations including Flight Centre, First Car Rental, Sanlam Reality and Edgars Club. A 2023 case study with payments company Stitch described cutting host payout time by a full day. The consumer sees a weekend away. Underneath sits a compact travel-software company moving inventory, money and service messages between many parties.
03 / The differenceA moat made of accent, payment and tone
LekkeSlaap competes with Booking.com, Airbnb, direct hotel sites and every WhatsApp message to a property owner. It cannot outspend the largest platforms or match their global inventory. Its advantage is narrower: it can behave as though the South African trip is the main event, not a regional edge case.
That shows up in mundane choices. EFT matters. A human who understands the geography between Colesberg and Cape Town matters. So do guesthouse and farm-stay listings that can disappear inside a global catalogue. The brand’s destination pages are organised around the trips locals actually describe - bushveld breaks, West Coast waters, the Winelands, whale watching - rather than only city and star rating.
Then there is the advertising. LekkeSlaap’s campaigns use Afrikaans wordplay, rugby players, roadside stops and television nostalgia with a confidence that a translated global campaign rarely finds. A 2024 commercial won silver at the Pendoring Awards. Its videos have accumulated millions of views because they often function as comedy first and travel promotion second. The joke says: we know the same references you do.
This is not a frictionless advantage. Local fluency can produce sharper reactions when a joke misses, and travel marketplaces must constantly balance guest expectations against host economics. App reviews include both enthusiastic repeat bookers and frustrated property owners. The useful signal is not perfection. It is that LekkeSlaap is close enough to the market for people to argue with it like a local institution.
04 / RetentionThree stays change the equation
Travel is episodic, which makes loyalty difficult. LekkeSlaap Rewards gives the company a direct answer. Joining is free. Tier 1 members receive 10 percent off at more than 2,000 participating Rewards properties. Complete three stays in 18 months and Tier 2 lifts the discount to 15 percent, with personalised vouchers that can be stacked onto qualifying stays. LekkeSlaap says members can save up to R1,214 a year.
The thresholds are modest enough to understand without a points calculator. They also work both sides of the market. Travellers get a reason to return before comparing every OTA. Participating hosts get a visible badge and a pool of price-sensitive repeat guests. LekkeSlaap gets a better view of booking frequency and can spend less effort reacquiring the same customer.
Do not make loyalty abstract when the core behaviour is simple. LekkeSlaap turns “book three stays” into a status change customers can remember.
05 / The next tripCan local trust cross a border?
In March 2026, Tripco appointed Frans Joubert as chief executive. He had served as chief financial officer since 2020. Van de Ghinste and Womersley moved into board and advisory roles, a planned handoff after 17 years of founder leadership. At the same time, Tripco concentrated the consumer business around LekkeSlaap, with TravelGround giving way to the stronger flagship brand.
Joubert’s stated argument is economic as much as competitive: too much travel revenue leaves South Africa through international platforms. A locally owned marketplace can keep more of the service, technology and host income in the regional economy. Expansion into Namibia and Mozambique now tests the premise. LekkeSlaap has to carry the warmth of a deeply South African identity into neighbouring markets without pretending every local context is the same.
The company has earned room to try. It won South Africa’s Leading Online Travel Agency at the World Travel Awards four years running from 2022 through 2025 and returned as a finalist in 2026. Its latest checkout redesign moves prices and policies earlier in the mobile journey, exactly the sort of unshowy product work a maturing marketplace should prioritise.
The broader lesson is not that every country needs a patriotic booking app. It is that global scale leaves seams. Language is one seam. Payments, service hours, property types and cultural tone are others. LekkeSlaap stitched several together and made them feel like one familiar place to book. The next challenge is to preserve that familiarity while the map grows.