Very pleased to see Departures Magazine’s much awaited Africa edition is out.
Pleased, admittedly, because Journeys by Design is credited in a number of stories – Holy Ethiopia, Mobile in the Mara and Guide to the Super Guides; and because I see that we rank in among their top 5 agents for Africa.
But also because I know that the ‘Africa Only’ publication is a culmination of a number of years of collaboration – between Departures Magazine and a small group of African specialists, a group made up of people who I have, for as long as I have been in the business of selling safaris, always looked up to, and who have served as an inspiration for Journeys by Design.
For our part, we owe the magazine a great deal. Departures Magazine single handedly introduced us to America. I do mean single handedly. Before the magazine first featured a Journeys by Design trip, the vast majority of our clients were European to a family.
American interest began to trickle in following the publication of a frontier piece on Lake Turkana and the South Omo Valley, and then, in 2006, exploded with a story on Tanzania, by Richard Story, the magazine’s editor-in-chief. Since then, we’ve featured another half a dozen times, and today, as a result, the American market constitutes 70% of our business.
As I say, we are very much in the magazine’s debt, and delighted for them that Africa has become such a wonderful inspiration for their storytelling.