Vanessa Mbenoun is a tourism entrepreneur and travel brand architect with over 10 years’ experience in the travel industry. She is based in South Africa and is the founder of Creative And Moving, a tourism and hospitality marketing agency and of Kamaroutes, an award-winning inbound tour operator.
For the past 6 years, Vanessa has been assisting entrepreneurs in Southern Africa in building and growing their travel brands. She has also partnered with institutions like ATLAS school of tourism in France, the University of Johannesburg and Nedbank to assist young professionals and final year university students with their transition into the world of entrepreneurship.
Vanessa is a staunch advocate of diversity and inclusion and recently launched the Tourism Entrepreneur Network, the first global platform for travel and hospitality entrepreneurs. The Network is also a media company producing a podcast aiming to connect African “tourismpreneurs” to the rest of the world. Less than a year after its launch, the talk-show was named one of the 10 best travel industry podcasts to follow.
Vanessa holds a postgraduate diploma in Tourism Management and is currently completing her MBA. She was one of the few African entrepreneurs selected by Airbnb for their prestigious African tourism innovators programme. In 2019 she won the coveted African Tourism Leadership Forum’s outstanding entrepreneurship award and in 2020, she also made the list of Tropics Magazine’s top 500 African Doers.