Tourvest Destination Management (TDM) is intensifying its drive to expand into high-potential countries across Africa with new developments in the pipeline for Rwanda, Zambia, Malawi, Ethiopia, the Republic of Congo and Ghana.
In an exclusive interview with Tourism Update, TDM’s CEO Martin Wiest confirmed the company has finalised agreements with destination management companies and operators to broaden the group’s footprint in several of the respective countries.
Focusing on ‘complex’ destinations
Wiest said, although full details cannot be revealed yet, the expansion is aligned with TDM’s focus of entering “complex” destinations where tourism is not yet commoditised.
“The benchmark, for me, is if a country – South Africa is a case in point – has the infrastructure to deliver comfortable self-drive tourism, it is open to commoditisation. As soon as exploring a country is largely only possible in a guided, packaged way, it makes it complex,” said Wiest.
“If you look at what we’ve done over the past five years, all of TDM’s efforts, investments and acquisitions were outside South Africa and Namibia. The focus has been on Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and now we’re ready for these other destinations that have such amazing attractions and require expertise to explore.”
Strong demand for new destinations
Wiest said TDM’s customer base has shown a strong propensity for travel to alternative destinations within the continent.
“When, for example, we cross-pollinated our customer base from South Africa, Namibia and Kenya to Madagascar, we saw a doubling of the head count in that destination. Our customers are continually looking for authentic, new experiences so the cross-selling of our overall footprint on the African continent will open up destinations to people that would not previously have considered them,” said Wiest.
The post-COVID return of high-value tourism has been particularly beneficial for the continent’s inbound sector, he said.
“Governments tend to count arrival numbers without quantifying quality. But we can see that the quality has improved dramatically, measured by length of stay and spend per day. We’re at about 70% of pre-COVID head counts but turnover is now exceeding pre-COVID levels, showing that the customer is buying better product and staying for longer,” said Wiest.
Wiest expressed excitement about the US market bouncing back to pre-COVID performance. The US was South Africa’s largest overseas source market in 2024 with over 372 000 arrivals, reaching 99.8% of 2019 levels. In Kenya, the market outperformed 2019’s levels by more than 20% to reach over 306 000 arrivals.
“That’s a great development as the US brings a lot of value in terms of spend. Europe is looking more stable than it was a year ago although markets such as Germany – which was historically our number one source market – still have a way to go. But this is again countered by the quality of the tourism we’re experiencing,” he said.
TDM’s partnership with South American outbound operator Diversa Tourism has helped the business tap into the potential offered by that market, he added.
“Diversa has a strong distribution capability so I’m excited that we’ve found a way of becoming relevant there and growing our business out of Brazil in particular.”
TDM is a division of Tourvest, an integrated tourism group, which operates around 60 brands spanning the entire tourism value chain in Southern and East Africa, employing more than 5 000 people.
