Tourvest Destination Management (TDM), a division of the Tourvest Integrated Tourism Group, has launched Your Africa, a digitally driven, direct-to-consumer luxury travel brand built for international travellers who seek more than a holiday.
Designed around the principles of hyper-personalisation, authentic connection and sustainability, Your Africa represents Tourvest’s first deliberate move into the B2C travel sector and is a significant marker of the group’s broader growth ambitions. Your Africa delivers the unexpected and creates lasting memories for the modern, discerning traveller.
Your Africa was founded on a simple yet powerful belief – that meaningful travel experiences are designed, not booked. The brand brings richer and more layered experiences to travel, allowing travellers to explore beyond iconic backdrops, immersing them in cultures, creating personal connections, and creating journeys that leave a lasting impression.
Clinton Els, appointed in January 2026 as the Managing Executive of Your Africa, with the intention of launching and heading-up the brand, brings more than two decades of senior leadership experience in the African and international travel industry to the platform. “We recognise that a significant and growing segment of the international travel market is looking for something that the traditional travel model isn’t designed to offer them. Your Africa brings this need into sharp focus, creating experiences that capture the ethos of ‘Your journey done your way’. We don’t sell trips, we create journeys that are built around our guest’s pace, passions and aspirations, and that are delivered through specialist ‘Travel Architects’ who are both relationship builders and experts in the sector.”
The Travel Architect sits at the heart of the Your Africa service offering. These consultants take their customer service beyond product knowledge, often working with clients for six to eight months to build genuine relationships that allow them to curate exceptional experiences.
This level of personalisation goes well beyond the expected standards of luxury travel and is further enhanced by a departure from the usual VIP welcome baskets and meet-and-greets. While these are valued, they are baseline expectations for Your Africa guests who will enjoy the benefits of a Travel Architect who knows their favourite wine, whether they’re marking an important anniversary, or their favourite colour. And this knowledge is translated into a bottle of wine of a vintage from the year they got engaged, or a case of their favourite wine delivered to their home in New York after they discovered and enjoyed it at a Cape Town restaurant. The Travel Architect ensures that every property a guest moves through, from the Winelands to the bush, knows who they are.
The platform is also digitally inspired with a website designed as an editorial journey across regions, stories and possibilities in a way that captures the brand identity. Central to the digital experience is the ‘Dream Board’, a feature that allows prospective guests to save images, articles, destinations and ideas as they explore. These boards can be shared with partners, friends or family and are automatically shared with the client’s Travel Architect, so they gain an even richer picture of the customer’s instincts and aspirations.
The comprehensive, modern and fully integrated technology stack that powers Your Africa is designed to ensure Travel Architects can build the deepest possible knowledge of their clients so they can create extraordinary and unexpected experiences.
As part of Tourvest Destination Management, with on-the-ground teams across Southern and East Africa – including Namibia, Botswana and East Africa, Your Africa removes the disconnect between planning and real experience, giving guests the confidence and authenticity that comes from teams who live and operate in the destinations they represent.
“This is our home. We’re not selling Africa from a desk. We are on the ground – the relationships we’ve built across this continent over a decade are fundamental to the depth Your Africa brings. Our portfolio has been carefully curated with approximately 120 suppliers, each selected not only for their quality, but for their commitment to community, environmental sustainability and the long-term health of the regions they operate in,” says Els. “When a guest books with Your Africa, every part of their journey has been chosen to ensure their trip contributes meaningfully to Africa. Their entire itinerary – every supplier, every property, every experience – has been chosen because it is genuinely working to protect the places and people that make Africa extraordinary.”
Your Africa is a strategic pillar of Tourvest’s growth agenda. While it introduces a new revenue stream and unlocks a consumer market segment the group has never previously addressed directly, its value to the broader business goes further.
Aligned to this, the Tourvest leadership team believed that Clinton Els was the right person to head up Your Africa, as he is a figure well known across the Southern and East African travel industry. This deliberate, strategic appointment signals the seriousness of Tourvest’s intent.
Els holds a BCom Honours degree in Tourism Management from the University of Pretoria, graduating cum laude. His career spans more than two decades at the highest levels of the African travel industry. He was also elected to the SITE Africa Board for three successive years from 2019 to 2021, cementing his standing as a respected voice in the wider industry.
“Everything in my career has been building towards Your Africa,” says Els. “My previous roles have allowed me to develop a ground-level understanding of African destinations and communities, digital and direct-to-consumer thinking from having worked in the technology world, coupled with extensive operational and leadership experience. Your Africa is where all of that comes together, and doing it within the Tourvest family, with the infrastructure and footprint that brings, is an extraordinary opportunity.”
