Bonfire Adventures, a business borne out of a chance meeting has grown to be a popular tours and travel company in Kenya.
When they won the 2023 Africa’s Leading Travel Agency Award, many Kenyans were not utterly surprised given its CEO’s persistent marketing on social media platforms.
Commonly referred to as the Kabus; Chief Executive Officer, Simon Kabu and Managing Director, Sarah Kabu are the entrepreneur-couple behind Bonfire Adventures.
In a past interview with YouTuber Wode Maya, Mrs Kabu revealed that the company is now worth more than US$ 7.5 million.
How Bonfire Adventures came about
Before WhatsApp was a thing, Google groups and Yahoo groups were the forums used for online discussions.
In 2008, Simon and Sarah were members of a Google group that among other things discussed Kenyan politics. Other than email addresses, names, and an occasional Gmail profile photo, it wasn’t possible to know the people behind the keyboard.
When members of the group decided to organize a physical get-together at Lukenya, a popular team-building destination on the outskirts of Nairobi, Sarah and Simon were among the few members who volunteered to handle logistics.
The success of this first team-building event prompted calls for a second one, especially from group members who did not attend.
As more events followed, Sarah and Simon would become the defacto logisticians for the group, a task that took a lot of their time and effort.
“Every time we organized an event, it would turn out so well. With time, we realized that the planning was taking up a lot of our time and energy and we began charging a fee. Even then, the turn-up was still high and one time over a bonfire at Maasai Mara Game Reserve, Sarah and I mulled over the idea of turning it into a business,”
Simon Kabu
It wasn’t long before they got a referral to organize a team-building trip for a company.
That marked the beginning of Bonfire Adventures since the corporate client could only deal with a registered business that would be paid via a bank cheque.
“We quickly searched for (availability of) the business name and registered a company. The funny thing is we had to keep the cheque for over three months because we did not have a bank account! That’s how Bonfire Adventures was born.”
Simon Kabu
The days and subsequent work trips spent in each other’s company saw the two start dating, and the rest as they say is…
A match made in heaven
Simon went to Kagumo High School for his secondary education before proceeding to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Egerton University. Always the entrepreneur, even while in college, Simon sold pirated movies, cooked at a local food kiosk, and touted on Kenyan matatus (passenger vehicles) to make extra money.
Born and raised in Embu, Sarah attended Nthagaiya High School and Kabare Girls High School, before proceeding to college where she initially pursued accounting, dropping it for information technology before eventually settling on business management.
Having studied business management, Sarah brought into Bonfire Adventures strong operational and planning skills that are pivotal to the success of a logistics-driven environment like a tours and travel company.
She was instrumental in planning clients’ itineraries, coordinating tour drivers’ schedules, liaising with host hotels, booking air tickets, and organizing timely pick-ups and drop-offs to keep clients satisfied.
A charismatic salesman, Simon on the other hand put his extroverted personality to work on onboarding many Kenyans into an industry that, until then, was more focused on international tourists and corporate clients.
The two revolutionized the domestic tourism industry in Kenya, demystifying the myth that going on holiday locally or in places like Dubai was a preserve of the rich.
A few years into the business, Bonfire Adventures had daily trips to the Maasai Mara Game Reserve with most domestic tourists using their services.
Today, with over 200 employees, Bonfire Adventures has six offices in Kenya and hundreds of travel packages to various travel destinations in Kenya and around the world.
It has become a common occurrence in Nairobi to see Simon Kabu flagging off hundreds of tour vans heading to different tourist destinations, every time there is a long holiday in Kenya,
Family
The couple wedded in 2009. They have two kids. Simon however has 2 other kids from two previous relationships.
In 2022, the dynamics of the blended family shook the marriage to its core with Sarah calling for a separation while lamenting that she was tired of ‘too much baby mama drama’.
Nonetheless, the two managed to weather that storm and keep the marriage, and the business together.
