I arrived at the ETENA Accelerator Bootcamp with a content plan, a packed schedule, and a camera roll ready to be filled. As a communications associate, I assumed my role would be business as usual, to document the experience, capture the sessions, the pitches, the networking moments and the energy of the week.
What I did not expect was how much it would stay with me.
The shift happened gradually, without me noticing. By the third day, I had stopped taking notes from the outside and started actually living the thing I was supposed to be documenting. The people in that room had a way of pulling you in.
Over the course of the ETENA Accelerator Bootcamp, 10 entrepreneurs from Egypt, Morocco, and Tunisia reminded me that entrepreneurship is not only about building businesses. It is about culture, curiosity, reinvention, storytelling, presence, and human connection.
What struck me most was where many of these entrepreneurs came from and what they were building. Several of them were not pitching the next travel guide app or urban venture. They were building something slower, more rooted tourism experiences tied to land, heritage, and communities that rarely make it onto a mainstream travel itinerary. And yet, the passion behind those ideas was some of the most compelling I encountered all week.
These are the lessons that are staying with me.
#1 Oumayma: Carry Your Culture With Pride
From Oumayma, I learned what it looks like to embrace your culture openly, naturally, and without holding back.
She always had a smile on her face and a story ready to share, and she had this rare ability to carry the warmth of Agadir, Morocco with her into every room she walked into. Whether she was talking about her farm, her hometown, or simply sharing small moments with the group, she made culture feel alive and personal and never performative.
She has the kind of energy that instantly puts people at ease. Listening to her speak about Morocco honestly made you want to drop everything and spend a season on a farm in Agadir.
In a world where people often work hard to appear global, polished, or detached from their roots, Oumayma was a quiet reminder that authenticity is magnetic.
#2 Yousri: Growth Does Not Have an Expiration Date
Yousri reminded me that learning is a lifelong choice, not a phase.
Despite everything he has already built and accomplished in decades of working in hospitality, he approached the bootcamp with genuine openness, and excitement. There was something quietly inspiring about watching someone who has achieved so much still choosing to explore new ideas, meet new people, and challenge himself creatively.
At one point, he mentioned that it had been a long time since he had felt truly excited about something again. That line will stay with me long after the program.
We tend to assume that excitement belongs to beginnings, early careers, new ventures, first attempts. Yousri challenged that assumption entirely. Passion can return at any stage, if you allow yourself to keep evolving.
He was also the living definition of “work hard, play hard.” Whether in sessions, networking moments, or group activities, Yousri showed up with both professionalism and energy. The hospitality king of the group knew exactly how to hold both.
#3 Hassan: Curiosity Creates Connection
From Hassan, I learned the power of asking questions.
Not only the big, strategic ones but also the small, seemingly random ones. Hassan was constantly curious about people, ideas, places, experiences, and perspectives. And somehow, those questions always led somewhere worth going: conversations, laughter, or connections that might not have happened otherwise.
Hassan also showed me how hospitality can become its own form of connection. On the pitch day, before he had even taken the stage himself, he was already serving the group Moroccan tea, a small gesture that somehow cut through all the nerves and noise and reminded everyone to breathe for a moment. That kind of generosity is rare. So is his knowledge of Egyptian culture, which ran deep enough that our Egyptian participants essentially decided he had earned himself an honorary passport.
#4 Nabil: Storytelling Changes Everything
From Nabil, I learned what it actually means to make people care.
He is the kind of person who can bring you fully into an idea, not by pushing it on you, but because his belief in it is so genuine that it becomes contagious. Listening to him talk about Rove World never felt like sitting through a pitch. It felt like being invited into a whole world.
As someone who works in communications, I connected with that deeply. Storytelling, at its core, is not about structure or technique. It is about emotion. It is about making someone feel something they were not expecting to feel.
Nabil reminded me that the most powerful communicators are the ones who leave something behind in you after they have finished speaking.
#5 Wahid: Presence Is a Skill
In the middle of pitching pressure, deadlines, packed schedules, and constant movement, Wahid somehow kept everyone grounded.
From him, I learned what it means to be truly present.
Through the meditation session he led and simply through the way he carried himself throughout the bootcamp, Wahid reminded the group to slow down. To breathe. To stay connected to yourself even when everything around you is moving fast.
There is something quietly powerful about people who bring calm into a room without forcing it.
He kept more than a few of us sane during that week, and I already know I will find myself reaching out to him the next time I need a reminder to stop and come back to myself.
#6 Amr: Acceptance Can Be Transformative
One of the conversations that stayed with me most happened during a peer circle with Amr.
He spoke about acceptance in a way that was simple on the surface but genuinely stopped me to think; accepting people as they are, adjusting to different personalities and situations, and learning not to resist every version of reality that does not match what you had planned.
It sounds straightforward. It rarely is.
I found myself deeply relating to what he shared, because acceptance is something many of us struggle with in silence. We try to control outcomes, manage situations, and shape the people around us rather than learning to adapt with grace.
Amr reminded me that growth is not always about changing what is around you. Sometimes it is about softening your resistance to it.
#7 Ashraf: Reinvention Is Always Possible
From Ashraf, I was reminded that consistency and courage can coexist.
His pitches were sharp, clear, and confident every single time. But beyond his delivery, what inspired me most was his story. Coming from an engineering and corporate background, he made the deliberate choice to leave that path behind and build something rooted in his passion for tourism. That takes real courage.
There is something deeply worth admiring about people who allow themselves to start over rather than staying in lives that no longer fit. Ashraf was proof that reinvention is not only possible, it is sometimes the most honest thing you can do for yourself.
#8 Mustafa: Calm Is Its Own Superpower
From Mustafa, I learned that composure and calmness is a form of strength.
The king of the Red Sea, as I came to think of him, is the living embodiment of “if there is a will, there is a way”, a philosophy that is deeply embedded in the Egyptian approach to life. A free spirit who takes life as it comes and somehow makes that look effortless. No matter what was happening around him, sudden schedule changes, pressure, noise, or crowded spaces, he remained steady and grounded. He has a naturally calm energy that somehow makes the people around him feel calmer too. But underneath that stillness is someone who knows exactly how to show up and deliver when it counts.
We often associate leadership with volume or intensity. Mustafa was a quiet reminder that confidence does not need to announce itself.
#9 Safa: Comfort Zones Are Meant to Be Left
Safa is a sweetheart in the truest sense of the word. The kind of person who makes you feel like you have known her for years.
The courage it takes to experience a new environment, unfamiliar faces and different dialects. She reminded me that stepping into the unknown is not always comfortable, and that is exactly the point. The moments that stretch us the most are usually the ones we almost walked away from.
And sometimes, all it takes is a little patience with yourself before everything starts to feel like home.
#10 Ayman: Crisis Management With a Sense of Humor
Ayman is the kind of person who can find himself in the middle of a crisis and somehow make it funny without dismissing it.
It is a skill that diffuses tension, keeps people grounded, and reminds everyone that things are rarely as catastrophic as they feel in the moment.
He is humble enough to ask for help, calm enough not to panic, and self-aware enough to laugh at the situation while it is still happening. In a bootcamp full of people learning how to handle pressure, he was a subtle but firm reminder that how you carry yourself through the difficult moments says more about you than the moments themselves.
What It All Points To
The more I listened, the more a pattern emerged. Almost all the ETENA accelerator entrepreneurs in that room were building at the intersection of tourism and something deeper; culture, land, community, identity. Not faster or bigger, but more honest. People who looked at where they came from and decided it was an asset rather than a limitation.
That is exactly what rural and sustainable tourism needs. People like Oumayma, who can make a stranger fall in love with Agadir over a single conversation, and people like Ashraf, who walked away from a conventional career because he believed the slower path was worth it. But potential alone is rarely enough. These entrepreneurs also need spaces where their ideas are taken seriously and where they can connect with others who understand the difficulty of building something meaningful in places the mainstream tends to overlook.
That is the core thesis of projects like the ETENA Accelerator. Not to just serve as a collection of business development tools, but an infrastructure for a kind of tourism that actually sustains the communities it touches. So for all the entrepreneurs who joined us: you might have left and gone back to your homes and daily lives and businesses but it is a guarantee that your lessons will stay with us for a lifetime.
