Ruby started with a simple observation. Zambia has hundreds of good lodges, guest houses and apartments — well run, fairly priced, and often half empty. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but because the people who would happily have stayed there never knew they existed.
A traveller arriving in a new town has few options. Ask around, drive and look for signs, or ring a number somebody gave them and hope someone answers. Good places stay hidden. Rooms sit unused on nights they could have been earning.
So we built a place where the two can find each other. Guests search by town, by price and by how many people are coming, and see real rooms with real availability. Lodges list their rooms, set their own prices, and take bookings without changing anything about how they run their business.
Every lodge on Ruby is checked before it appears. When a guest books, they get a reference they can use to look up their own booking, and the lodge gets the details before the guest arrives. Nobody turns up to a room that was already taken.