Entrepreneur Paul Sarfati has spent more 20 years reinventing travel businesses around one principle: different travelers need different travel companies.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO, September 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Before there was Bamba Travel, Be DMC, Urban Day Trips, Baboo Travel or Viajando Juntas, there was a young traveler with a backpack and an idea.
That idea has now evolved into Bamba Experience Group, a growing family of specialist travel brands spanning adventure travel, destination management, day experiences, tailor-made travel and women-focused group journeys.
The story began in 2005, when entrepreneur Paul Sarfati, together with co-founder Arturo Martinez, launched Bamba Experience after Sarfati studied entrepreneurship at Babson College and developed the original business concept while at university.
Sarfati had already spent much of his youth traveling. A year-long backpacking journey around the world at 18 helped shape his view that the most memorable travel experiences rarely came from standardized tourism.
Bamba Experience was created around that idea.
It eventually evolved into Bamba Travel, building a business around independent, experiential and adventure-oriented travelers.
But rather than attempting to stretch one brand across every type of traveler, Sarfati and his team repeatedly chose another approach:
Build specialized businesses for specialized markets.
In 2008, the group moved deeper into destination management with operations in Mexico and Peru, laying the foundations for what is today Be DMC, including Be Mexico and Be Peru.
In 2013, Urban Day Trips expanded the group’s focus into shorter, locally driven experiences.
Then came a very different challenge.
By 2020, consumers had become accustomed to customizing almost everything they purchased online, yet planning a complex tailor-made trip remained fragmented and surprisingly difficult.
That insight led to Baboo Travel, founded in 2020 to connect travelers with carefully selected Local Experts and use technology to make personalized trip planning simpler.
In 2026, the group added its newest brand: Viajando Juntas, created around another increasingly important travel segment — women who want to explore the world but may not want to travel alone or join a conventional escorted tour.
Twenty-one years after the original Bamba Experience was created, what has emerged is not simply a collection of travel brands, but a case study in niche marketing, specialization and constant adaptation within tourism.
“One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned as an entrepreneur is that you can’t assume the traveler you served ten years ago is the same traveler you’re serving today,” said Sarfati. “Travel changes. Technology changes. Distribution changes. People change. You either keep listening and adapting or eventually your business stops being relevant.”
Today, the group’s brands address different parts of the global travel market:
– Bamba Travel focuses on accessible independent and experiential travel.
– Be DMC, through operations including Be Mexico and Be Peru, works behind the scenes with international tour operators, agencies and travel companies requiring local destination expertise.
– Urban Day Trips focuses on local experiences.
– Baboo Travel combines Local Experts with an increasingly AI-enabled platform for creating and managing tailor-made journeys.
– And Viajando Juntas is developing curated small-group journeys built around connection, care and shared experiences for women.
Technology has increasingly become the thread connecting the businesses.
The group is investing in AI-enabled systems that allow its teams and local partners to manage inquiries, plan trips, communicate with travelers, build proposals, operate bookings and maintain customer relationships within a more unified environment.
For Sarfati, however, technology isn’t the product.
“The travel industry sometimes talks as though technology and human service are competing ideas,” he said. “I see exactly the opposite. The better our technology becomes, the more time our people should have to do the things humans are actually great at — understanding somebody, creating something memorable and taking care of them.”
That philosophy may also explain the group’s continued move toward increasingly specific traveler segments.
Rather than building one enormous travel brand, Bamba Experience Group is betting that the future belongs to companies capable of combining scale behind the scenes with specialization in front of the customer.
From backpacking to DMC services, tailor-made travel, AI and now women-focused journeys, the businesses have changed considerably since 2005.
The underlying entrepreneurial idea has not.
Find a traveler who isn’t being served well enough — and build something specifically for them.
About Bamba Experience Group
Bamba Experience Group is the travel group behind a portfolio of specialist travel brands including Bamba Travel, Be DMC, Be Mexico, Be Peru, Urban Day Trips, Baboo Travel and Viajando Juntas. Its businesses operate across leisure travel, destination management, tailor-made travel, experiences and travel technology.
Paul Sarfati
Baboo Travel Inc
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