“I love my country, and the culture here. When you talk to the people here, you go back in time,“ said Eduardo Becerra, founder of Cultural Immersion. His company is a local tour operator in Peru. It specializes in taking visitors to native communities that are often far from popular tourist areas, offering very authentic Peruvian experiences.
Because Cultural Immersion serves a global audience of tourists who want to connect with small Peruvian communities, it needs to have agnostic and easy ways to process payments for its services.
Connecting Buyers and Sellers
“People come to Peru from all around the globe, and they have really high expectations,” Becerra said.
“Sometimes they can have trouble trusting a small company in a far away place. We are sometimes asked to process payments in an easy way, so that’s how we started using PayPal. It allows us to simply accept payments from all over the world.”
Becerra shares part of Cultural Immersion’s revenues with members of the local communities that it takes tourists to visit. This in turn, helps the native community members pay for educational expenses for children, and more.
Artisans Online
Recently, Becerra opened a store on eBay to sell products made by local artisans to tourists who have visited, but didn’t find exactly the products they wanted on their visits.
“I can’t imagine my business running without the aid of these technologies,” he said.
For more on Becerra’s Cultural Immersion story, watch the video above.