Andre Van Kets, Co-Founder, Discover Africa Safaris

At the foundation, it’s passion. As co-founder of a safari tour operator, I have always had a deep, intimate love for Africa, and that authenticity translates directly into a more appealing product for the right markets. We’ve also always run Discover Africa with integrity and a family-values culture, which means our team of expert safari planners feels genuinely valued — and that shows in how they treat their clients.

On the commercial side, our growth has come from consistently meeting travellers where they are.

Twenty years ago, when the internet was still young, we invested early in a strong website and strong Google search visibility, which was virtually the only channel that mattered at the time.

Today there are dozens, even hundreds, of potential touchpoints — Google Search, Google’s paid platforms, Google Maps, social media from Facebook through to TikTok and Snapchat — and, in the last two to three years, a growing presence on AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude.

The key has been adapting our presence to match a traveller’s state of mind, whether they’re dreaming, researching or actively planning their safari — this we’ve established over the past two decades.

We’re an African safari tour operator working across Southern and East Africa, serving conscious travellers who want a premium experience — which doesn’t necessarily mean opulence or expense. True luxury, to us, is often about rarity, exclusivity and authenticity: how hard something is to experience in ordinary modern life.

We work closely with safari lodge operators and ground handlers who deliver genuinely unique, authentic experiences, and we package those into journeys that are tailor-made for every single traveller.

No two travellers are the same, so the key to planning an excellent safari is understanding each person’s individual needs and preferences — destination, lodge style, activities, fine dining and wine, how flexible or structured the trip should be, and budget.

Getting those nuances right is what creates a remarkable, unique journey, and it comes down to listening closely to our clients and delivering on that professionally, empathetically and with genuine care.

Our core strength is our ability to understand what a traveller truly wants and match that to the thousands of safari lodges, camps and destinations available across the continent — essentially, matchmaking people’s travel dreams to reality.

That’s underpinned by an intimate, on-the-ground knowledge of Africa’s destinations and properties. Being based in Cape Town, we travel to our source destinations three or four times a year, which keeps us far closer to the product than agents or operators based in the US or Europe typically are.

We also invest heavily in the technology behind our service, which means our team spends more time understanding clients’ needs and less time on booking administration — that’s where a lot of our premium service actually comes from. More recently, we’ve started using AI to take over some of the more mundane tasks, freeing up additional human time. Our philosophy is that AI should enable and expand human connection, not replace it.

When we started twenty years ago, we focused on the destinations we knew best — South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe — because you can’t be a master of everywhere on day one. We built deep expertise there first, then gradually expanded across the rest of Southern Africa.

In 2014, we moved into East Africa, starting with Tanzania and Kenya, and later added the gorilla-trekking countries. Most recently, in 2025, we added the Republic of Congo to our portfolio.

The value in this spread is that different destinations don’t just offer different safari experiences — they offer different degrees of wildness and adventure. For a first-time safari goer, we’d typically recommend something more familiar and attainable, like combining Cape Town with Sabi Sands or Kruger and some beach time.

As clients come back for a second, third or fourth trip, which happens often, we elevate the degree of adventure and depth, because that’s genuinely what returning travellers are looking for.

That’s the real purpose behind having a broad geographic footprint. And Congo won’t be our last addition — we’re continually looking at where else aligns with the kind of travel experience we want to deliver.

On the industry side, it comes down to integrity and building real human connection with our partners, particularly in an era where automation and AI are disrupting relationships elsewhere.

Operating ethically builds trust over the long term — something we’ve proven over more than twenty years in business.

On the client side, it’s about showing you care rather than simply saying it; actions matter far more than words. We encourage almost every client onto a video call so we can build real rapport, even from across the globe, and that upfront connection has turned into genuine friendships — clients visit us in Cape Town and meet us for dinner when they’re in town.

A newer initiative is what we call traveller stories: after a trip, we invite every guest onto a debrief call to hear what they loved, what they’d change, and to swap stories about their safari experience. That feedback goes back into improving our service and is shared with our partners where relevant.

We then have one of our travel writers turn their story, alongside their own photos, into a written digital keepsake that we give back to them as a thank-you. It consistently delights clients, and when they share it with friends and family, it naturally drives referral business — but we do it because it’s the right thing to do, not just because it’s smart.

Ultimately, all of this ties back to why we do this work: a thriving safari economy funds conservation, sustains wildlife, and protects the jobs and livelihoods of families in some of Africa’s most rural and wild areas for generations to come.

See https://www.discoverafrica.com/traveller-stories/