TOURVEST DESTINATION MANAGEMENT: Blending Human and Digital to Support Authentically African Experiences
Tourvest Destination Management has long been recognised as an industry leader across Africa’s tourism space, but it continues to reinvest itself as a digital player based on complex human nature to ensure its market share is growing. CEO Martin Wiest talks to Enterprise Africa about navigating the company’s challenges.
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Tourvest Destination Management has long been recognised as one of the most influential forces shaping Africa’s inbound travel experience. Across decades of evolution, the business has remained committed to delivering journeys that reflect the depth, character and richness of the continent. Through 2024 and 2025, Tourvest Destination Management continues to push forward, building on its long-standing strengths while transforming its technological core and extending its reach into new geographies.
Featured in Enterprise Africa in 2024, the company was busy completing its post-Covid rebuild, but trends have shifted, markets have twisted, and traveller expectations have changed rapidly. Yet Tourvest Destination Management has continued to deliver on its promises. The business has come through turbulence, reshaped many of its internal systems, and is now positioning itself for broader influence. CEO Martin Wiest describes a company looking boldly at the future, aware of the challenges that remain, but confident in the foundations built over decades.
“Everything that we planned has borne fruit, and so we are happy with the progress that has been made in the past 12 months,” he says, reflecting on a period marked by recovery and invention.
Exclusive Interview with Martin Wiest, CEO
CORE STRENGTHS
Tourvest Destination Management sits within one of Africa’s most diversified tourism groups. Its mandate spans inbound leisure, sports tourism, corporate travel solutions and events-based travel. With 1,300 employees across southern, eastern and selected international destinations, the business has grown into one of the continent’s most significant destination management operations. Wiest captures its scale simply: “Our core business is inbound leisure travel and we handle around 400,000 leisure travellers into multiple destinations.”
The company is deeply rooted in Africa’s most iconic destinations: Namibia, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda, Rwanda and Madagascar. Beyond this, the footprint is broadening to new markets including locations in the Mediterranean and Caribbean. According to Wiest: “We are broadening our footprint into the Mediterranean where we have opened in Majorca, and to the Caribbean where we have opened an office in Antigua.”
This diversification is no accident. It reflects a long-term strategy built on the understanding that regions perform differently across economic cycles, and having the knowledge and power to innovate where traditional tourism players are not yet present. The past few years reinforced just how vital that principle is. While Covid brought the global industry to its knees, recovery has since been uneven. Tourvest Destination Management’s structure allows it to ride both the highs and the lows.
That resilience is mirrored in the business’ financial posture. “Our revenue is back to pre-Covid levels, and that is satisfactory, but we always want more,” Wiest says, encapsulating the company’s approach: stability as a baseline, ambition as a constant.
MARKET REALITIES
Wiest outlines industry recovery nuances with clarity. “Different regions trade differently”, but this has had direct implications for the company’s strategy and performance. In South Africa, he notes that the recovery is “mainly in the five-star market and comes mainly from the USA, and that is a function of air capacity and air pricing”. Meanwhile, Namibia follows a similar pattern, again due to constraints in flight availability and affordability.
Contrast that with East Africa, where the narrative has shifted far more positively. “East Africa has a totally different trajectory because they have endless air capacity and much better pricing, so the growth there is exceptional,” Wiest says. Passenger volumes tell the story clearly: southern Africa trading at around 80% of the 2018/19 season, while East Africa stands at around 125%.
“Our business is benefitting from the fact that we are present in both destinations,” Wiest notes. Were the company concentrated solely on South Africa, performance would be steady but not outstanding, he adds. In what seems like an obvious strategy, being able to execute at scale is far from easy. Tourvest Destination Management’s multi-market presence provides the balance needed to drive growth while insulating against regional shocks.
International arrivals into South Africa hit record highs in late 2025, demonstrating a rebound driven by long-haul markets. But the industry remains mixed. Sub-sectors continue to lag, especially where middle-market tourism struggles with the dual pressures of pricing and capacity constraints. Across Africa, by contrast, tourism growth in 2025 has been among the fastest in the world, showing the significance of emerging destinations and new airline connectivity. Tourvest Destination Management sits intentionally at the intersection of both trends.
DIGITAL AMBITION
One of the most profound transformations underway at Tourvest Destination Management is the adoption of new technology and the integration of digital systems across the business. While much is said across the industry about digital transformation, Wiest offers a particularly pragmatic view — one shaped by the realities of destination management rather than theory.
“Digital transformation will play a material role, particularly in a commoditised destination such as South Africa, and to an extent Namibia,” he says. Destinations where self-drive or self-organised travel has become easy are increasingly commoditised, meaning traditional destination management margins face pressure. In such contexts, the only viable path is to digitise operations, improve efficiencies, and compete on speed, accuracy and convenience.
But Wiest is clear that digital transformation is only part of a bigger picture. “The terminology banded around right now, with ChatGPT and AI etc, can only be a portion of the total picture in terms of what you want to do to future proof your business,” he explains. Complexity, in his view, remains a crucial advantage. “Complexity is a friend and you have to remain in complex segments that require human input. Where you compete in commodity, you have to digitise.”
The company is pursuing both directions simultaneously: defending and enhancing its role in high-complexity travel — multi-leg safaris, curated experiences, multi-country itineraries — while re-engineering commoditised segments. “I will challenge you to find another TMC on the African continent that is digitally transforming while remaining in the higher complexity markets. That is our core strategy,” Wiest states.
The integration of artificial intelligence into business operations is central to that effort, but Wiest cautions that the process is anything but simple, laden with boom-and-bust companies that acquire LLMs and other technologies-of-the-moment but ultimately do not last. “We are grappling with the complexity of trying to adopt AI not just in projects but across the business,” he says. Tools alone are insufficient; what matters is enterprise-wide maturity in strategy and execution. As he puts it, “It’s easy to adopt AI tools and look for low-hanging fruit but the probability of success is greatly increased where there is maturity in programmatic cross functional enterprise strategy.
“There is a significant level of failure, and a lot of that relates to data quality, integration, risk and change management.” The solution, he emphasises, is consistency and long-term thinking. “Primarily, organisations that have a longer view, and understand the focus and attention to detail that is required, have the best chance of success.”
Central to his approach is coherence. “You cannot have a Christmas tree of micro solutions. You have to have a system that pulls it all together. Otherwise, you end up with tech stack that is totally unmanageable.” It is this insistence on architectural discipline that stands out, especially in a rapidly digitising travel world.
Tourism in Africa is also changing. Traveller expectations have evolved quickly, with customisation and speed becoming non-negotiable. “If you want to be successful in tourism on the African continent, you have to be able to straddle technology and humans,” Wiest says. The industry is undergoing a seismic shift, he notes: “Five years ago, it was good enough to create an itinerary at a competitive price and throw it into the market, but that is no longer good enough.”
The transition, he warns, “is dramatic, fast, and brutal. It will leave a lot of businesses behind in the wake of the tsunami, and my job is to ensure we are not left in the wake.”
NEW HORIZONS
Growth beyond digital transformation forms a core part of Tourvest Destination Management’s direction. The wider Tourvest group operates across foreign exchange, corporate travel, leisure, sports, accommodation and activities. This creates a platform for expansion into destinations that support multiple business pillars.
Wiest outlines the geography of future ambition. “We are continuously on the lookout for countries with similar opportunities,” he says. New Zealand and Australia make sense strategically, albeit distant. But nearer opportunities beckon. “West Africa is a missing mark on the map for us, and we want to use Ghana as an incubator and broaden from there in 2026.” The Comoros, largely absent from mainstream tourism for decades, represent another potential frontier. “We could easily restart that with flight connectivity and a few resorts, and we are quite happy to do things like that.”
Other islands, he argues, are less viable today. “Zanzibar is the biggest island in Africa in terms of passenger volume, but investing there now is commercial suicide.” Instead, Tourvest Destination Management seeks geographies where new tourism models can be built from the ground up.
Alongside Africa, the company continues building its Caribbean presence and maintains an active interest in Europe, even though operational costs remain a barrier. “We have lots to do,” Wiest summarises. “Broadening further in Africa, defending our position in South Africa (always difficult), broadening in the Caribbean, and thinking about Europe all the time – but it is frightfully expensive to operate a business there.”
LOCAL FOUNDATIONS
Tourvest Destination Management’s supply chain strategy has evolved significantly. Where relationships were once dominated by face-to-face negotiations, the rise of digital inventory and channel management has compressed timelines and transformed engagement. “We work with software partners as our time to market, which used to be eight months, is now three months or less,” Wiest says. Agility has become essential.
Yet the company remains anchored in its philosophy of supporting local partners. “We have a philosophy of local is lekker,” he says. Global chains often lack local nuance, making local suppliers better suited to delivering the authenticity that underpin African experiences. “We support local first and global second because we think that gives the soul, flare and warmth of Africa.”
Alongside these partners, Tourvest Destination Management stands at an inflection point: a leader redefining its business in response to a fast-changing tourism environment. With a dual strategy that embraces technology while protecting human-centred complexity, the company is drawing from decades of knowledge to shape the next phase of African travel.
As Wiest puts it, success in the coming year will be measured by remaining in complex trading spaces, broadening geographic reach, and defending core positions through digital transformation. A business that has long defined African travel is now intent on reshaping it for the decade ahead.