Travel Trends with Dan Christian
#1 B2B Travel Podcast. If you are looking to stay ahead in the travel industry, this new podcast hits all the highlights! The Travel Trends Podcast is where industry leaders converge to share & shape the future. Whether you're an emerging entrepreneur, a seasoned industry executive, or a dedicated travel professional, you’ll be able to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Uncover valuable insights, innovative strategies, and meaningful connections that will elevate your travel business or career to new heights.
Travel Trends with Dan Christian
Transforming the Way We Book African Adventures with CloudSafaris
Ever wondered why traveling to Africa feels so complicated compared to booking a European vacation? In the final instalment of our Safari Series, we’re joined by Joshua D'Souza, Co-founder and CEO of CloudSafaris, to explore how his company is transforming this narrative. Combining his expertise as a Waterloo-trained computer scientist with over 50 years of family ties to East African tourism, Joshua is breaking down barriers in the safari booking industry.
CloudSafaris is solving a common travel pain point—accurate pricing and availability for African safaris—by working directly with trusted local operators. Covering destinations like Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, and South Africa, their platform enables instant booking and guarantees authentic experiences through thorough vetting processes, including evaluating safaris firsthand.
Joshua also challenges the misconception that safaris are exclusively luxury trips, showcasing how they can be surprisingly affordable—sometimes comparable to a week in New York City. We explore CloudSafaris' evolution from a software tool for local operators to a global B2B platform, and Joshua reveals his vision of an AI-powered tour operator that could extend beyond Africa.
This episode offers invaluable insights into how technology is opening up one of travel's most transformative experiences. Subscribe now to hear how this Canadian startup is revolutionizing access to the wonders of Africa.
👉 Listen to Transforming the Way We Book African Adventures Now
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We love. We love Africa like the different countries that we've lived in across. You know East Africa, southern Africa it's just like unreal. It's like the culture that we've experienced, the people, the music, the like, the different landscapes and everything. The only thing that we want to do is be able to actually promote that to the world and get people to and across you know the different countries across Africa.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome to Travel Trends. This is your host, dan Christian. And all of a sudden we are in Season 5 and Episode 10 and our final episode of our African Safari series, which is going to feature the CEO and founder of Cloud Safaris, joshua D'Souza, who we'll be speaking to in just a moment. But before we get into that, a few quick updates. I'm currently in Mobile, alabama, preparing to give a keynote at the Educational Travel Consortium Conference, and I'm also going to be recording a series of podcasts to highlight their plans for Focusrite Europe in Barcelona in June, where all of our listeners can get an additional 100 euro discount. Check out our website for more information there. And then, one of the other really exciting developments over the last couple of weeks is that we posted for a marketing coordinator Literally a week ago. We've had more than 800 submissions, so I've actually just closed it off today, but I did want to highlight this to all of our listeners because I do not want to miss an opportunity to find someone extraordinary that listens to our show or is closely connected to the community that listens to our show, that would be interested in taking on such a role.
Speaker 2:Our team is expanding. We've got a fantastic team dynamic and we're really looking to expand in a number of different directions, because one of the things that has really stood out to me in the last few weeks, as some of these geopolitical tensions have continued to affect our global travel community, we are seeing that there's more and more interest for executives, entrepreneurs and anyone working in this industry to better understand these trends and what's happening. And, after all, that's exactly where travel trends started post-pandemic to understand customer traveler behavior in that post-pandemic world. And now we're seeing a similar surge of interest again where people are reaching out to us to discuss various topics and to get into some of the matters at hand. So we're going to be introducing a new series in addition to address that, and part of that is having this marketing coordinator on board to assist our growing team with all the initiatives we have underway. So if you or someone you know is interested in joining Travel Trends, have them reach out to hello at traveltrendspodcastcom and we'll be sure to review and come back to them and hopefully we'll make a final decision on this role within the next week. But even if you're listening into that afterwards, then please, by all means, feel free to reach out to us because our intention will be to continue to expand and always looking for amazing people. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:Our longtime listeners will be very familiar with travelaicom, one of our sponsors, from the very beginning. They've sponsored the last two seasons and also our AI Summit. You might actually remember they were recently featured in season four. The two co-founders, john Liotier and Chris Jensen, live from Focusrite, where they shared how their innovative use of AI is reshaping the travel industry. If you missed it, we highly recommend going back to hear their inspiring story of building one of the fastest growing, profitable AI companies in travel. Entirely bootstrapped Travel AI is revolutionizing the industry by blending AI-powered efficiency with personalized, human-centered travel experiences, from micro-segmentation to tailored travel solutions. Their mission is to enhance every traveler's journey while setting the pace for travel's future. Here's how you can join the exciting mission. If you, or someone you know in tech or AI, is looking for a new career that combines innovation and impact, then head to travelaicom or follow them on LinkedIn to explore more opportunities. They are growing fast. Thanks again for your continued support.
Speaker 2:And now back to the show. Let's turn our attention to African safaris and this final episode we have in store for you. I hope you've enjoyed this entire series, starting with Sherwin from African Travel and Ian from Wilderness, and then Cliff from Savannah Tours. Now Cliff D'Souza, of course, is Joshua's uncle, and I think that actually provides good context for today's conversation, given that I've had the opportunity to meet Joshua a few times in person, and the thing that stood out to me is not only is he a committed entrepreneur that has a very clear vision, he's very driven and motivated. That's obvious, and that's one of the things that stands out to me about an entrepreneur that is really committed to their team, their business model. But the other thing that really stood out to me about Joshua is his background, and he's a computer science engineer from Waterloo, which is one of the top schools globally, certainly in Canada and North America, our Silicon Valley North. He's obviously a fellow Canadian, which I highly respect as well, but primarily because he has a global view, and that's one of the things that's exciting about being based in Canada but really running a global business, and so there was many reasons I wanted to have Joshua on this series, but it really came about.
Speaker 2:Once I had a chance to see him at WTM in London and had a chance to meet Cliff and understand the background on his family business, where they've been active in Tanzania for more than 50 years running safaris, education and expertise. He's even a travel agent, and him and his team are very committed to building out a B2B platform for partners to be able to better sell African safaris, and they're leveraging a significant amount of AI technology to be able to do that. So for more information, be sure to check out cloud safariscom. But in the meantime, let's introduce Joshua and don't forget we post clips and highlights on all of our social channels, so be sure to check out Instagram, linkedin and YouTube for highlights from our conversation, not only with Joshua today but through the African Safari series. But otherwise, let's get it going. Joshua, great to have you on Travel Trends. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you, dan. Really, you know, your podcast has been an inspiration to myself and the team for all the times, with all the podcasts that we listen to from you.
Speaker 2:So really pleasure to.
Speaker 2:It's great to be here, yeah, likewise, I mean, we've had the privilege to meet a few times in person at the TOR radar event and World Travel Market in London.
Speaker 2:You came to our after party gathering and obviously people got a good sense of who you are from that introduction. But you obviously have kindly sponsored this series as well, which I greatly appreciate, especially for a new startup that is rapidly scaling, and I think it's a smart, savvy move. But I also I just want to extend an appreciation for being such a big supporter of the show, and so I'm keen for our listeners now to really understand more about you, because you really do have a very impressive background, and that's what stood out to me from the first time I met you and subsequently when I see you navigating a room and all the different people that are interested in talking to you and understanding this business you've built. But let's actually start with your personal background and then we'll quickly get into cloud safaris, because you are a Waterloo graduate, you've done computer science and so and you've decided to focus on travel. So tell everyone a little bit about your personal background, being a fellow canadian yeah, um, all right, where we start over here?
Speaker 1:um, honestly, I guess, like, uh, growing up and everything my, my life has always really been centered around like um, entrepreneurship in a sense.
Speaker 1:I mean like my family, my whole entire family growing up, like my dad was always involved in you know, different businesses here and there, um, and that kind of led me and honestly for me as well as like I've always been keen on different like technical things, like always some breaking apart things when I was a kid and then you know that kind of carried through growing up and actually led me to waterloo, um, joined waterloo actually in this program called mechanical engineering, actually the university of waterloo, and then ended up switching to a program called management engineering.
Speaker 1:We had a large focus on software throughout the program, um, and yeah, I guess from that, that, um, that coupled with the old entrepreneurship um vibe or the entrepreneurship background from my, my family growing up, um, that really, um, sparked me into always kind of building solutions and, uh, building you know, different tech for for different problems that I would see, you know in university itself different, I guess like different different problems that I would experience, you know, in university itself, I guess, like different problems that I would experience.
Speaker 1:It's like from, like you know, just coming across problems with it. That'd be via, like you know, different projects I was working on in school or whatever, but, from a tech and entrepreneurship perspective, always was involved in the startup ecosystem in Waterloo. They were very, very strong startup ecosystem with the whole velocity concept, garage and incubator and everything. Even my co-ops throughout the degree were always via different startups, whether it was startups I was working for or startups I was actually building itself. So, yeah, from a personal standpoint, that's pretty much been it on the engineering front, living across, honestly, east and South Africa for the past couple of years, which has been a blessing because I got to skip the Canadian winters, but, yeah, now we're back in Toronto with the cold.
Speaker 2:Well, that's all good, but I wanted to make that connection because for many of our American listeners and global listeners, you graduated from what are effectively called here the Silicon Valley North, and a lot of people who graduate from Waterloo I mean. They go on to incredible careers at various tech companies. It's actually more rare that people choose the entrepreneurial path. It's also more rare that people remain in Canada, and it's even rarer yet that they decide to focus on the travel industry, because there are so many other ways you can apply the valuable skills and education that you have. So that's what I loved.
Speaker 2:When I first met you, I was just like man, you're a super smart guy with this impressive background and you've decided that you want to enter the Safari space and kind of transform how this whole industry operates, and that's where I think Cloud Safaris really does have a potential to be a disruptor, but also to create a whole new business model. So let's talk about that, because I think that's where people have been hearing it on this podcast over the last few weeks. They've been hearing my reference to cloud safaris and now we finally get to sit down with the person behind it all. So tell us, if you wouldn't mind how you decided to create cloud safaris, um, and really what inspired you to to build this company with your business partners?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so CloudSafari has actually started out in 2019, believe it or not. So it's been a long time since the genesis of the whole idea and everything. But I was living with my co-founders from the University of Waterloo, both of them actually. One was in management engineering, the other one in mechatronics engineering. I was living with them. This was 2019.
Speaker 1:I had just come back from a trip to Tanzania. I had climbed Kilimanjaro, went to Safari in northern Tanzania and I realized that a lot of the, from the itinerary perspective, a lot of these tour operators were doing everything via pen and paper and just PDFs that they would send to clients via emails. So we actually built the first version of Cloud Safaris as a SaaS service to these local tour operators. We built an entire system for them to have an automated quote that they would get back to a customer. And because we were honestly just like I don't know engineering the grads at the time like we were very, like we over optimized and like we're making like building out models to create like itineraries in a very, very complex way, which is like, honestly, too much of an overkill, but anyways, that's how it first started off we sold that SaaS service to a couple tour operators in East Africa. And then, obviously, this is actually when 2020 beginning it was like COVID hit. No one really had money across the region to spend on the service and especially, a lot of these tour operators in the local hotels and lodges in the area are all kind of like mom and pop shop businesses, and so, as a result of that, actually we had to stop the business at the time, and then in 2022, I went back on ground to Tanzania with my co-founder and we spent, you know, like six months living in Tanzania, literally just exploring the region, living with local tour operators, just understanding, really, what the problems were.
Speaker 1:Past the whole basis of the itinerary creation software that we initially built. Past the whole basis of the itinerary creation software that we initially built, and that's when we really dove deep into the problem. When it comes down to the operational side of things, for our local tour operator is very, very manual when it comes down to receiving a request from either a travel agent or a traveler If it's like four adults and two children, or two adults and two children to look across a PDF to check what the pricing is for those people to stay on a given uh, at a given hotel on a given night, emailing those hotels to check for availability, and that whole process goes back and forth until you know the travel agent travel agent or traveler, you know, maybe they want to change one date for the trip and that spins up that entire process again, and so we really dove deep into the problem. In 2022, in 2023, um, we actually ended up doing like a soft launch for our product.
Speaker 1:Things went quite well and I guess the basis of that was in automating a lot of the pricing and availability for building our trips in Tanzania. That was 2023. Last year, 2024, things were going really well. Over a couple of months after our launch, we had moved back on ground to Kenya and then we ended up raising a pre-seed ground with a couple of investors one in Canada, one in Tanzania and one in the US and, yeah, we've been building and growing ever since, which has been amazing, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, tell us also the branding, because when we first met at that TourRadar event and we'd been in touch before, of course, but it was the first time we had a chance to meet in person and I was asking you then how I mean, I had my understanding of where I figured the name came from cloud safaris but, uh, I'd love for you to be able to share that with our audience. So tell us, I guess, where that brand came from and what it is intended to represent yeah.
Speaker 1:So I guess safaris is kind of a given, just uh, by the word itself and the nature of like, how it relates to the travel business we were building. But um, safari is actually um in swahili means uh, trip or journey, um. So that's actually the the root of that word itself. But the cloud basis was actually just on a front of you know, us being engineers and us building tech. It was like the pair between you know tech and safari. So putting that together, um to build a solution for people. And honestly, the other, the other side of thing from a cloud standpoint, was just putting everything in like a dreamlike state, you know, just like being on cloud nine. So obviously, all the times that we've been out on Safari in you know, kenya, tanzania, you know we've been out in like Rwanda, uganda, it's always been in like a dreamlike state. To be honest, there's nothing like experiencing, you know, serengeti, like sunrise or sunset. It's a whole other different experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I really really liked the branding, so that's why I wanted to highlight that and I guess that's where getting into then, well, cloud safaris, what do you guys do? And and so again, some people have maybe heard that over the last couple of weeks on the show and with kind of the summary that I've been sharing, but again now they get to hear it from you. So tell everyone, how does cloud safaris work, like, how do you actually work with local safari companies? And maybe even if you wouldn't mind, just kind of walking us through the process of aggregating these safari packages.
Speaker 1:So, essentially, as just an overview of what we do at cloud safaris, we make it super simple for travelers, travel agents or travel companies to sell safaris in Sub-Saharan Africa. So literally within the span of seconds, you're able to actually get a trip with accurate pricing and availability based on the travelers that are coming in for a trip and the requests that you want. We're able to actually piece together trips in a span of seconds. And this is on the basis of our systems actually doing all the work. And so essentially how we work and essentially from a tour package perspective and even just like building trips on our side, the way that we get into different work with local safari companies and get into different regions Our team actually has gone on grounds and lived in now Tanzania, kenya, uganda, rwanda, south Africa and the way that we actually get into each one of these regions first is we find key local tour get into each one of these regions first is we find local, key local tour operators um in each one of these regions.
Speaker 1:So I'll use tennessee as an example. Um the first time when we went down into tennessee and my co-founders and I like we lived there for about six months, we lived with the local tour operator, um, and literally we spent time understanding what their operations were, um, from a day-to-day perspective. We saw their team, we saw their operations, um, and literally we we get a full picture of how they operate on a day-to-day basis and then, just from the basis of actually going in and checking out each one of their teams, we see how they can handle things from an operational perspective. From there, the way that the travel side of things usually works with safaris is that these larger tour operators will have these key tour packages which they then purpose and then they actually repurpose and then they send that out to travel agents to then sell. We take those tour packages and we actually ingest all of that information into our systems and then we can actually give that to travel agents or to travelers in the span of seconds, just in terms of finding a tour package, finding the accurate pricing, availability on that tour package as well. So that's the first layer and so it said Tensody initially and how we like live the local tour operator for a bit.
Speaker 1:But getting into Kenya as an example, we found key tour operators that we wanted to work with in Kenya. We worked with them for quite a number of weeks we went to go see their teams in person, honestly interviewing a lot of the different team members, interviewing the co-founders of those local tour operating companies, to understand how they are as people and the way that they operate. We take their tour packages, we ingest all of that information into our system and then a key part of our process we actually understand then the nuances of how they actually put a trip together. So, when a custom request comes in, how is it that they actually piece together a trip? And then we, honestly, we code all of that logic into our system and then we're able to actually give that out to travel agents and travelers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's interesting because I want to ask you a bit about that too, like the B2B and B2C model, but just in terms of the product that you're aggregating. One of the things that I know many travelers to Africa including myself before I had been I never saw Africa as a destination that you could travel independently, and so and that's one of the reasons why people do book safaris and oftentimes people are not. They don't. There's usually a perception of it being kind of luxury because of the cost of, you know, being on safari, and so there's kind of two ways to travel in Africa. You can either travel really economically and stay for an extended period of time, but if you need to only have a week, you're going to have to pay a premium to get where you need to go and stay at more luxurious lodging.
Speaker 2:And I know Africa is changing in many, many positive ways, and one of the things I certainly look forward to, just speaking to someone like Charles Shima who runs Tour Afik, is that trying to open up Africa to people that might actually just fly to Rwanda and then decide from there if they're going to do a day tour, like how people travel in Europe today.
Speaker 2:So I look forward to seeing that start to develop, and obviously I think that your solution will kind of lend itself in that direction. But I guess where I'm going with my question, josh, is that one of the reasons that people are hesitant to travel independently is their comfort level of traveling in a destination, and the quality of the suppliers is always paramount. And so you know, and it doesn't matter where in the world you are, that applies everywhere, but certainly with Africa, people want to know. Sure that these people have been vetted like am I going to get a great safari experience? So tell us a little bit how you actually approach ensuring, I guess, the quality and authenticity of the experiences as you bring on more providers to the platform.
Speaker 1:With the key suppliers that we work with in each region. So every time we've gone into a region actually you know we've mentioned we honestly we work with these different tour operators for a given period of time to actually really understand, like, how it is from an operational perspective, like, are they able to handle capacity in terms of, like, how many trips have they done in the past before? How big is their team? Is it just a, you know two people in an office and like that's how they're running everything, or do they have a team of you know 20, 50, 100 people that are on the road? One of the key things do they actually own their own safari vehicles? Do they have a shop where they can actually service their own safari vehicles or is it that they're sub hiring from a different company? And like, those key things actually make a big difference because they make you, they let you understand, like, how you can actually work with the tour operator and the basis of like, are these tour operators actually responsible in terms of taking care of their own vehicles, making sure that they have proper guides that are coming in to actually drive the vehicles, because, at the end of the day, they own the vehicles. They want good people to actually drive the cars, um, and so, from that standpoint, it's like us coming in understanding, from an operational perspective, if there's a minimum threshold for these operators to handle, just in terms of, like, their team, team size, the safari vehicles that they have and everything if it's in-house or if it's sub-hired. And then, further to that, one of the big things that we actually do is we make sure that we as a team go on a trip with each one of these operators, and so we'll typically go on a trip out in the bush and we we don't go from a perspective of it where we're enjoying the Safari, but it's more of just like, hey, we're, we're getting into, we're getting into Safari territory.
Speaker 1:How's this guy now interacting with us? Like, if there's any problem that happens, like, how is the guide handling this problem? If there's a breakdown when we're on Safari, like, what does the guide saying to us how we actually manage? Like, how are things being managed? Um, when we, when we go about doing this, is the guide responsible? Or is he now at like, is he doing things out of, uh, doing things essentially from our request that he ends up just fulfilling, because, you know, we end up being like the, the travel agents, in a sense, in the car, or is he actually being responsible and telling us like, hey, like this is not actually what we do around here, like we need to do things in a certain way, but anyways, um, the basis of that it's again just working with the tour operators, understanding how their teams work, seeing how big their teams are if they own their own vehicles, and then honestly just going on trips with these local operators.
Speaker 1:And then, from the basis as well, it's just like we also, you know, as CloudSpark is a team like we we've, we've, uh, we do have our b2b side of things where we make it very easy for travel companies and travel agents, uh, to go on trips, but we also do have, like, um, some customers who come in directly through the cloud spars brand, and this is where we get a good basis of like understanding of like how to work with these different tour operators on ground and how they actually respond back to us, even if it's on these like ad hoc bases we'll be.
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Speaker 2:What's really interesting is that these tour operators and from my experience traveling to Africa I've been to South Africa and I've been to Eastern Africa, kenya and Tanzania and these incredible lodges, game parks and these local operators they don't necessarily to this point, maybe the exception of some of the lodges that are well marketed. They work through intermediaries and that put these packages together, but ultimately they're the ones delivering on these experiences, which is why I'm excited for what you're building, because if people, whether it's B2C or B2B have greater access to a wider number of suppliers, certainly some safari companies regularly use the same lodge, the same operator, and it's a bit of a repetition in terms of how they organize like a seven-day trip, right, and so I like the variety and the fact you're going to be able to surface more.
Speaker 2:So, but tell us a little bit about how you're approaching B2C versus B2B and how you see cloud safaris growing. Is it your intention to be channel agnostic? Do you want to grow both channels, I guess? Where are you prioritizing your efforts now and where do you think the business will initially really kind of start to grow?
Speaker 1:So we are going to be prioritizing B2B, but I want to actually sorry, I want to backtrack and touch on some of the points that you actually mentioned. So one of the things you mentioned earlier on was, again, if you travel to Africa like different countries within Africa and you can stay, and if you stay for an extended period of time, things become a lot more affordable. But, like going on a shorter period, for one week, things end up being, like you know, more premium. So, actually, touching on that point, um, we've actually, like we have actually seen like the opposite um, safari really is just how expensive that you want to make it really you can stay at different, like very budget properties or you could stay at very luxury, luxurious properties. You can have a private safari or you can actually have, you know, join a group and go on a trip itself like some of the most affordable.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, packages and trips that we have on our site are actually group departures.
Speaker 1:They're four or five day trips in, you know, in kenya, and they start at a cost of around like 900 usd per person, which is like a great experience for even like a solo traveler coming in dude is like has this perception of like, hey, like I'm going to spend a lot of money, like I'm going to spend a lot of money traveling to kenya, tanzania, but it's like you don't actually have to spend that much of money um going on safari, like you can pick certain different regions that you want to go to, you can have these shorter trips, join different groups, um, and actually have a very affordable safari experience, and not that you're even staying on like a campsite, but you'll actually stay in proper hotels and lodges, um on safari journey itself.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, that was one of the things that we actually wanted to break like from that perspective of like safaris are not actually that expensive. Like when you actually I posted a lot of these videos initially on Instagram, doing cost comparisons of like flying and traveling to New York for a week versus going on safari in Kenya, and it was like even including the international flights, it was like the safari in Kenya ends up being like it was like a hundred or $200 more for like a private safari essentially. And so, yeah, just like from a cost perspective, it was like looking at things from that, we did a lot of comparisons on that front. But, anyways, you have margins at different levels, and so a typical safari is at least $2,500, but it can easily be $5,000.
Speaker 2:So, like a couple going to, it's like a $10,000 trip. And so actually what you're pointing out is really important, especially for the younger generation that may think that safari is something you have to wait until you're retired to do, and so the best time to travel is when you're fit and able and and uh and can go on these adventures and hike. So I'm actually really glad you mentioned that, because this is where you can help demystify it for our audience and educate me as well, for that matter too, because this is your expertise.
Speaker 1:So actually going on to the, the second point there just, uh, backtracking again a little bit, um. So, yeah, um, a lot of the way that the from a supplier perspective, the way that they work right now, like for the tour operators, as an example, it's like, yeah, they will package together these entire trips, where things end up being very cookie cutter. In a sense, it's like you have the same hotels and lodges for different trips that travel agents will then sell, or travelers will then be put on, and so, essentially, though, the problems that we've seen is that these tour operators that put together these packages and the trips the reason why they do it is because, when it comes down to a pricing and availability standpoint, it's very difficult for them to actually make to service ad hoc requests. So a client's coming in for a seven-day trip or a five-day trip and they want to stay at a mix of budget and mid-range lodges. A tour operator would then have to do all the legwork to reach out for availability at these different properties, to find the pricing of what it was going to cost at each one of these different hotels and lodges that would be at the park fees that they would have, and so, to make it very easy to sell the trips. They package these cookie cutter safaris together and then that's what they actually then sell to travel agents, or they give to travel agents in order to actually distribute.
Speaker 1:Because it makes it very easy then for a travel agent to sell a trip or safari to, you know, sub-saharan africa, um, to east africa, to south africa, um. And the reason again is because it's from a distribution lens. It's like these tour operators don't have, like it takes a lot of time and effort in order to actually put together a trip um for a customer, and so it makes it a lot easier from a distribution standpoint to just package these things together, give it to a travel agent and the travel agent is the one who actually deals with it and actually can sell that as a trip itself. So I mean, one of the things that was very important for us, going back to how we actually deal from an operational standpoint, is like when we, when we go and we, we bring and we bring on the tour packages that these tour operators have into our system, that's our first way of actually launching in a region.
Speaker 1:But the most important thing is we actually learn how does a tour operator put together a trip in Tanzania and Kenya and Rwanda and Uganda, if there's an ad hoc request coming in, if a traveler is requesting a trip for five days, seven days, what is the actual line-by-line items that they're doing in order to actually see what's available, what's this going to cost, et cetera, et cetera, all those different components, and then the basis of the genesis we're building now is automating that piece itself. And so from a travel agent perspective, it's like, okay, hey, I don't even have to work with tour packages anymore. I can just make a request to the cloud support system saying I got two travelers with one child traveling on these specific dates. They want to stay at mid range, mid-range lodges, that this is their budget and our system is able to actually create and pull up a trip that a tour operator would do and actually give that to a travel agent with the span of seconds. Um, instead of again, a travel agent would speak to a tour operator, they would go back and forth or they would have to work with the existing tour packages that are given from a from that lens.
Speaker 1:So a big vote for us actually is like, I guess background background from this and even like how I got into this space but my family were actually tour operators in east africa for over 50 years, um, so they'd run my family's run the tours for ex-president jimmy carter for the. They were the dmcs for some very large players in uh in north america. We've done the, the trips actually forokesh and Bani as well. We've worked with some really good players in the space. Family company has been operating for over 50 plus years and so from the perspective of me understanding from a family business side of things of how complex and time consuming it is for the families operations to put together trips on that basis, that's the genesis of what we were going towards. It was like it was building the tech to help out these mom and pop shop local tour operators actually distribute their product at scale.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's great.
Speaker 2:I appreciate you making that family connection too, because we hadn't actually touched on that yet your uncle, cliff D'Souza, who we just had on the previous episode, so people can go back and listen to that if they haven't already.
Speaker 2:But given what we just stumbled upon there, I actually wanted just to dive a little further into what are, I guess, some of the common misconceptions about traveling to Africa and how cloud safaris now can help address those. So you obviously have dispelled one, which is that it's not as expensive as it might otherwise appear when people are looking into safaris. It can be more economical and uh and comparable to how, like a week in new york city, um, which, like you know, it's five dollars us at night fora minimum for a hotel in new york city, so I get that whereas like a safari lodge, like a beautiful lodge, can be a thousand dollars a night, but it's uh if you're traveling with two people. But yeah, tell us so give us some other uh, josh, other misconceptions that people might have about Africa and how you're going to solve that or overcome those with Cloud Safaris.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think, honestly, biggest misconception that I've heard is around the safety and security, around things within and across Africa. You know, yeah, this is a very tricky topic, uh, some very tricky thing to like to talk about. Um, my perceptions, honestly and like, just from the way that I've chatted with people in the past, it's like number one. It's like people think that africa is a country. It's like no, like africa is not a country. There are many countries across africa, each country with having like their own, different, like diverse, like regions, and like different, diverse landscapes, culture, music, people, etc. All these different side of things. And so, from a safety and security lens, it's like that's like where we can touch on it. The first thing. It's like, you know, if there's a conflict that happens in one region, it's like it's commonly perceived that that happens across the entire continent and so it makes it very difficult.
Speaker 1:It's like when, um, you know, as an example, like if, if there's an event let's say Canada as an example, if there's an event that happens, a security event, god forbid that happens in, like Alberta that is very far away from you know, ontario, and so you, you understand from, like you know, being in Canada and like people understand like, okay, you know Vancouver to Toronto, something happens in Vancouver, it's very far away from Toronto and so what happens in Vancouver shouldn't really affect what's going to happen in Toronto. And so that basis, from a safety and security standpoint, though, like in and across Africa, something happens in Northern Africa or in South Africa as an example that's usually then linked to hey, is this going to affect me when I travel to Tanzania, kenya, or if something happens in Kenya, is this what's going to affect and happen to me when I'm in Tanzania? And there's a lot of like I don't know perceptions around people thinking obviously Africa is a country, but it's not. Like obviously there's many different regions, cultures, different governing bodies across the board.
Speaker 2:So you actually break that down a bit for us because, actually, what I would like to do and if If people have been listening over the course of this series, as we've had various conversations, we've obviously dived a bit into the different regions of Africa and why you might travel. Like when I was working with African travel people likely have already listened to Sherwin's conversation, but one of the I was building out their website it was fascinating for me to look at the map of Africa and be able to understand what countries you would go to for what specific like do you want to see the gorillas? Do you want to do trekking? It's like, as you said, there are so many countries within Africa and they all have something different to offer and safaris are one key part of the way you can travel to Africa. But, yeah, break it down from your point of view. Like South Africa, tanzania, like Eastern Africa, what are the top destinations that you see travelers going to? And and I guess part of my question would be with cloud safaris is the intention to broaden that?
Speaker 1:So I'd say the top three. I guess safari parks that people will actually be at will be, honestly, kruber National Park, then you have the Serengeti and the Masai Mara. So you've got South Africa there, tanzania, kenya. Those are pretty much like the, the three, those are pretty much the three parks that people will tend to go to. Um, you know, the messiah morrow has become very, very famous um across kenya, just honestly because, um, it's very accessible to get to kenya, like the flight connections getting into nairobi are very easy, um, coming in from wherever you are across the world. Um, but in comparison, honestly, the messiah morrow is actually part of like, essentially like the serengeti, like they're part of the same. The messiah bar and the serengeti are part of, like the same ecosystem, but when you look at it on a map, actually the messiah bar is a very fractional size compared to this, compared to the serengeti itself. But, um, yeah, those end up being like the, I guess, like some of the three biggest like regions or parks that people end up going towards. Um, and you know, every time we have, like, a traveler request coming in, whether that's from, like, one of the different travel companies we work with the travel agent to traveler. There's always a basis of like, hey, like I want to see the great migration, um across, you know, the serengeti, or, um, the misai mara, um, and so, yeah, those end up being like, uh, I guess, some of the most popular destinations that we've seen. Yeah, I think, from the basis of how we're building right now, it's like we really are trying to build that connectivity across the region itself. It's like we look at Tanzania as an example.
Speaker 1:One of my favorite parks actually in Tanzania is this park called Mkomazi National Park, and that's actually in. It's pretty much like it's on the drive from Arusha to Tanga, which is like, I guess, north, northeast, northeast, um tanzania itself. But it ends up being one of my favorite parks because it's one of the actual like untapped parks of the region. Um, there's a lot to see. There's a rhino, there's a rhino, there's a rhino project actually at the park itself, and so you can actually go up to these rhinos, like very, very up close.
Speaker 1:They have wild dogs in this park as well too, which is like very cool experience, but it ends up being like a very like untapped region, and so it's like, yeah, people come on safari and they think, you know, you just have to see these main parks, whether that be like the gorongoro crater, sarangeti, um, but yeah, a part of like our mission at cloud safaris is to expand across the board so we can offer these different regions um different parks and places that people can go to so let's talk about that too, because one of the things I always ask whenever I'm looking at different travel companies and this was always such a big part of my role working within travel brands is really understanding your USPs and your unique selling proposition.
Speaker 2:And how do you stand out from the competition? And you, being a startup entrepreneur, obviously you know all too well about trying to. What problem do you solve? And so how does Cloud? So why does cloud safaris exist and how is it going to be successful? Like, what is it that you're solving that others aren't? So I'd like, if you wouldn't mind I'm sure you have this in a pitch deck somewhere, but likely very top of mind is like what do you see that's going to set cloud safaris apart from other safari companies or travel platforms that are in the market?
Speaker 1:honestly, the first thing that comes to mind and I've been talking about this with my team a lot honestly it's, it's uh, it's being able to get like pricing and availability for tourists in developing countries within this span of seconds, um, and you know, stuff that's actually available, accurate and good for someone to do or like actually reasonable for someone to do. I mean, you know, we've seen different like, even if you look at it from like an AI basis with different you know ChatGPT as an example of like ChatGPT or some of these other AI itinerary builders that we've seen online. It's like these systems will actually like put together trips and they might be able to give you an itinerary in, you know, tanzania, kenya, south africa, but some of the trips end up being like not feasible um that come back from these different itinerary generations um, and they don't actually have the pricing and availability um for the different things. So when we look at like the problems, um, this is where this is where I think like we really are. We really do stand out as a company itself um, at cloud spores. What we really are building is a data layer on top of the entire um, a data layer on top of the like the local tour operators in these developing regions. So a big moat is that a lot of these different players, like even big travel companies, um, companies that are selling safaris right now.
Speaker 1:It's like it's all on the basis of existing the tour packages from these different regions itself, um, and so one of the things that you know that we're building that gives us a really big advantage is that we actually build.
Speaker 1:We build systems for local tour operators to actually use, so we take a lot of their availability and a lot of their processes and we put that all online, which gives us a big, really big, strong advantage, to be honest, because we can now actually give the ability for travelers or travel agents to tap into these systems and get data back in the span of seconds, and data that's not just just hey, like we're giving you back, like this, this random hotel in like the middle of tanzania that, like you know, you won't be able to actually access, but this is a hotel, now that's actually part of an itinerary that you can actually access via this and this route.
Speaker 1:This is how much it's going to cost and it's available for these given dates, um, and so, yeah, that's like I think, like, um, I want to think about from, from our mode it's really is that data layer that we are, we are building on top of, like, the different tour operators in these developing regions, where we're bringing them all online, we're giving them the ability to do what they do best, which is operate trips, and we are taking on that whole like sales and distribution, like for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing, as we sit here together in 2025 and certainly people listening to this is like just understanding how much of the travel industry is still not digitized or connected to be able to be booked, and so there's still a massive opportunity. And that's what excited me as I came to learn more about what your business and what you're building. And I guess, to go back to the B2B versus B2C or the combination of both, you mentioned that you're going to focus initially on B2B to start scaling this business, but is the intention also to work direct with customers and I guess, how are you going to strike that balance as you build out Cloud Safaris?
Speaker 1:To be honest, our focus is just on B2B right now. We started off doing a lot of B2C side of things, but I think we have a lot of value that we can provide to a lot of these different travel companies and travel players in the space. I mean, are our best thing that we do is like we we have this entire data layer that we're building on top of these, like you know, these local tour operators, and we can actually distribute that out to many different players in order to actually use and like. Our whole thing is like at the end of the day, it's like like and we love, we love africa, like the different countries that we've lived in across you know east africa, southern africa it's just like unreal. It's like the culture that we've experienced from you know, like the culture when it comes down to the people, the music, the like, the different landscapes and everything.
Speaker 1:The only thing that we want to do is be able to actually promote that to the world and get people to and across, you know, the different countries across africa, and so for us right now, it's like we are. We are primarily focused on the b2b side of things. Um, b2c is not in the, I guess in the time horizon for us currently, right now, we are operating trips if people do come in, but that's more on like a word of mouth basis on that front. But our whole thing is give these bigger travel companies, to these larger travel agencies, the opportunity in the systems to actually sell, you know, safaris and trips across sub-Saharan Africa to their travelers in the span of like seconds, in an instant.
Speaker 2:In terms of growing the business, b2b. How are you marketing yourselves and getting the word out about Cloud Safaris to work with various partners? Obviously, being on this podcast is a great way to do that, because this is a B2B podcast after all, so it makes perfect sense. But yeah, tell us some of the other ways you're marketing Cloud Safaris.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a big part of us actually was all the conferences that we've been to over the past couple of months. You know I've been blessed to be able to meet with some really big players across the space, you know, across like different travel agencies, different travel companies, and so, honestly, having that one-on-one personal connections at these you know conferences, like you know, going to, even like Skiff to New York, going to focus rights, um, you know many of these people like in person, it's been a, it's been a big blessing to us. To be honest, um, our strategy has really primarily involved um, involved around that. We're working with a very big travel like company right now that's very big across social media, um called travely um, and so we work with their team very closely right now, um, and so we've been focused primarily on that channel um for quite a bit because that's been, uh, been driving a lot for us. Um, it's been, uh, you know, helping, helping us, um, it's been building, it's been pulling a lot of product out of our hands, which is very good, and so we're focused on that um currently, right now.
Speaker 1:But honestly, yeah, from a partnership standpoint, it is like going to these different conferences and like, as soon as we honestly we found this as soon as we show people the product can be built like we've been into, like from a startup perspective, like myself and my team have driven to travel agencies across ontario, literally mapped out, like it mapped out days and offices where people are and literally just popped in their office and like trying to meet with like you know someone, like the founders um of these, like different agencies, as an example, and as soon as we show them our product, it's like they're kind of blown away to, to be honest, which is amazing. It's amazing to see, but it's like we offer something that's very different than what's in the space right now and as soon as someone sees it for the first time, they see the value because they know the problems that they face on a day-to-day if they're to try to sell safaris in East Africa, sub-saharan Africa.
Speaker 2:Clearly being a startup, though, as you're seeing success with B2B partners. You are taking on capital and raising, and I know we briefly chatted about this directly, but I would be keen for you to be able to share, I guess, where you are on that journey and I'm assuming, based on your background experience, the high caliber team that has come together and the size of the market for this opportunity All of those are in your favor in terms of being able to raise capital. But, yeah, tell us where you are on that journey and then, once you actually receive that investment, how you see the business scaling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so we're raising a round right now, so this is our seed round that we are going towards. Honestly, a lot of the basis of why we're raising this round is from the genesis of our products being ripped out of our hands right now. We really need more people on the team in order to actually build and scale the product. Myself and my entire team we're all engineers. I worked at a Y Combinator company as one of the founding engineers for over three years. Like my co-founder was like a director of engineering at a venture studio in Toronto. Other, like co-founder, had worked at Tesla. Like we were all engineers. We've been coding day in, day out for the past two years, but we've gotten to a point where, like, we've been ripped from a point where we were three like full-time engineers, like working day in, day out, like literally the entire days, um to a point where we need more people in order to actually build a product that we need to give and distribute out to to people right now and so on.
Speaker 1:The fundraising path we had closed in our pre-c last year in april so 2024 april um, we're at a point right now where we are racing.
Speaker 1:We are raising more money currently.
Speaker 1:Right now it's actually me, flying back from tanzania literally two days ago, was to come to toronto to meet um someone and meet an investor in toronto over here that we've been speaking with um for the past couple of uh months and so we have a strong lead on that, which is great, um, and we have a lot more in the pipeline coming in um on that perspective.
Speaker 1:But anyways, um, on that front too, it's like from the standpoint of like product just being ripped out of our hands right now. We've even gotten to the point where we've like, we've gotten to the point where we've been interviewing um people across the board right now for ready engineering and operational roles, and so my co-founder, cto, has been literally like, has literally done like seven interviews with engineers yesterday, and we're at a point where we are ready just to hire, to bring someone on, and so, yeah, essentially that's where we're at right now. We are racing around. Yeah, we'd love I mean, if anyone is very interested in the African travel tech space, we'd love to chat with anyone on that front. But yeah, it's from the basis of like we're not just raising the money to raising money right now. It's like we need to build and grow because products are getting ripped out of our hands and people want to go to Africa A lot of people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's an exciting time for you and the team and I guess that's where from my takeaway from that. Clearly, obviously you've invested in the tech but there needs to be more to build up the platform. You need to increase the resources to build out the team that can actually service all of these accounts. So like B2B sales, and then I guess the bigger picture for you I mean this is like current reality. I'm, you know, I have every confidence that you and the team are gonna be successful. There's certainly people that you meet on your journey.
Speaker 2:Michael Litt was one of those. Michael Litt who runs Vidyard. Many years ago, him and I shared I invited him to speak on a panel at Canada 3.0 in Waterloo and he had just got back. We did Y Combinator and they had settled on Vidyard as their main business and this is now 15 years ago and he's one of the most successful Canadian entrepreneurs and a graduate of engineering from Waterloo, much like yourself. But he decided to stay in Canada. He got a brief stint in California but came back to found this company and run this company and he's an amazing success story.
Speaker 2:So I guess I say that to you that, like you know, I had a similar sense in meeting you and I'm sure other investors and even people listening to us will feel quite similar like someone who's driven, motivated, smart, capable. You know, and Matt Zito, who was on our investing and travel podcast. He was highlighting the first thing that they look at is the team. It's just like it's all team at the beginning. It's like so if you invest in the team and you see there's a market opportunity, there's a lot of stuff you need to figure out on the way. So I'd love to just take like three steps forward or four steps forward for that matter and actually think about what the bright future for cloud safaris could look like in three years or five years. So obviously things will change. But tell us how you envision cloud safaris growing into, especially as the tourism industry evolves. Like what is your long-term vision for this company?
Speaker 1:Spoken about this with the team so much honestly in the past couple of months. The basis of what we're building right now and what we're heading towards is we are really building an AI tour operator and so we're automating a lot of the back and forth processes that a tour operator typically has with a travel agent or a traveler, and we're doing this for developing regions and so, essentially, the vision, when it comes down to, you know, the five-year plan as an example, it's like you know, we want to get across Africa completely, being able to build that data layer for the tour operators so we can offer that AI tour operator experience to different travel corporations. But, honestly, we've seen this problem, not even in East Africa, southern Africa, but we've seen this problem even in countries like Venezuela. As an example, we've been looking at India, nepal, and so essentially, our whole moat is that, with the tech that we're building right now.
Speaker 1:It's like we're starting with Africa right now because, because we know we know africa, like we know east africa best, that was the best place to begin, obviously, from the family background and everything, um, just to operate and get going um, but from a five-year perspective, it's even expanding outside of africa into, you know, looking at two different continents to see how we can make, you know, travel to these developing countries a lot more accessible to travelers, travel agents etc. Um, yeah, within the next, I guess like shorter term, like year, yeah, again, just growing our team so we can actually build up the products that we are hiring across the board for engineering roles right now in Canada. So Canadian engineers, yes, support the Canadians. We're actually on an operational basis. We've been hiring for operational roles in East Africa right now. So, yeah, we've actually have someone that will be onboarding in Tanzania soon.
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Speaker 1:honestly, africa is huge and there's so many different diverse cultures, so many different diverse landscapes. You know. You look at, uh, tanzania, with the landscapes of, you know, gorgorokrator serengeti, going out to zanzibar even. And you look at Tanzania with the landscapes of, you know, gorgorok Kreti, serengeti, going out to Zanzibar even. And you look at Kenya, with the difference, you know you look at Nairobi as a city just being super developed, easily accessible to get around. You look at South Africa, cape Town, just having unreal landscapes, people obviously very different culturally from East Africa. So I honestly think, from like, from looking at it as a basis basis. There's so much in Africa to explore, but why not start now? It's like you could go on a trip to Tanzania, kenya, right now. Go back, do another trip, go out to Rwanda, experience what it is from the developments in Kigali itself, go out guerrilla trekking, go back home and come back to South Africa. It's like, you know, if you look at even like europe, there's so many different cultures across the different countries across europe and it's like people know europe, um, I mean, make that assumption, but essentially there's so many different cultures across that board, but that same experience you have is in africa as well you know, um, and so, from that standpoint, honestly, it's like africa's huge, huge continent there's 54 countries across the region, like across the continents itself. It's like africa's huge, huge continent there's 54 countries across the region, like across the continent itself.
Speaker 1:It's like why not start now, like there's so many different cool things to explore? Um, even outside of a safari, like standpoint, there's like go on your safari but stay in the different, like major cities pre and post safari to like understand what it is, to like actually live there, to be like you know, to be embraced as, like a, as like a local or as like just like to, to feel and experience that local experience, like do other things that even like are outside the safari experience, because there is a lot, um, there's a lot to explore there. I fell in love with it. I'll be going back there like consistently now, um, but yeah, yeah, no, that's so.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to add something to that, because one of the lines I heard and I think it was paul thoreau, the american novelist, that uh is that this quote is attributed to. But it's a a famous quote which um resonated with me after traveling to africa for the first time is like is that, if you could only visit two continents, go to africa twice? And uh, and and the other thing I would say too, again, this is this is my, for my personal experience. A number of my colleagues working in the travel space were so excited for me to go to Africa for the first time and just to go into the bush, and then, when you the smells and the sights, it's like it's literally it's written on your DNA, like it's just something you're transported through time where there's a sense that, like you know, I've been here before and I know that sounds crazy. I'm not a particularly spiritual, religious person, but I'm just saying from our human evolution that there is something, you know, deep inside our brain that identifies with us being in that environment and it's incredibly stimulating, as you would imagine, like your senses are just so heightened. So that's why many of us travel anyway to escape our realities and come back changed and Africa is probably aside from our experience in the Galapagos, which was still very much wildlife is quite transformative.
Speaker 2:So I definitely I was so excited to bring this series together on African safaris and have all these amazing interviews that we've had over the last few weeks and, of course, have you on your uncle as well, and I'm kind of bullish on Africa as a, as a region, and I'm very optimistic and and if you just look at a human population, I mean the other thing we're also going to have is that more Africans as they achieve middle-class status, which is a wonderful thing, that has really driven the whole travel industry you're going to have actually more people traveling internationally.
Speaker 2:Or even the thing that always frustrates me when you go to a destination is like when locals don't have the ability to realize the same opportunities that international travelers have, and countries try and address that. So even being able to make sure that locals have the opportunity to go on these safaris and to be able to experience their own country and their own backyard. So, yeah, there's so much opportunity in this space, Josh, but leave us with a couple of things that everyone should be paying attention to, if you wouldn't mind, like first thing, I guess would be for anyone who's planning their first safari experience, any last bit of advice you might have for them. Um, and then tell us a little bit more about how people can follow you, connect with you, find out more about Cloud Safaris and track your journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure. So I guess, yeah, just on the Safari note, just a couple of things on that. We'll take it back to the misconception side of things. Safaris don't have to be expensive. Like you can have a very affordable and like really great experience, like being in, you know, the bush in the Serengeti national park. Like seeing that sundown. Like you know having your gin and tonic or you know some other drink, just watching the sunset with, like you know, the people that you love around you and tell everyone actually you raised something important there that people learn.
Speaker 2:Why do people drink gin and tonic on a safari?
Speaker 1:yeah, so I I believe this is I mean, the story's probably been changed multiple times, but I believe the actual, the reason why people actually started gin and tonic is actually, as a thing is tonic itself. Um, there's a, there's a like, there's a, I think it's made with an ingredient which is actually the same like medication for malaria, and so there was actually the like. These people were in the bush and every night they would actually go down watch the sunset, you know, and they would be drinking gin and tonics because the tonic water had that ingredient to actually, you know, help, uh, help with, uh, with malaria. And so that's kind of kind of how the whole sundowner concept uh, started. It's like watch the sunset, um, you know, have a drink in the bush, have your gin and tonic, you know, if you get bitten by a mosquito, it's like that, a gin and tonic will definitely help.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's exactly what the idea of trying to avoid mosquito bites, um, while you're there, like not that it's a major issue anyway, but um, but no matter what if it does or it doesn't, because some people are going to be like, oh no, like science says it doesn't, but anyway, no matter what, it's. A great way to finish the day is to have a strong tonic exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no matter what, it's a, it's a good story and, uh, it'll make the sun, the sunset, if you're just that, much more glorious and just you just chill out and relax. But yeah, it's the, the q9, I guess from the tonic water they thought could help with malaria. But yes, anyway, back to your uh, back to your wrap-up yeah, yeah, um, and honestly yeah.
Speaker 1:From a safari perspective, yeah, it's just, you know, safaris don't have to be expensive. You can have a really great trip, you know, a really great trip at a very affordable price point. I would say, you know, if you're going on safari and you're staying in these regions, you know, do something pre or post a safari, where you're staying in one of these major cities for a period of time, whether that be Nairobi, dar es Salaam, kigali, like gali, like experience a little bit more of like what it is to you. You know, go out and just like get a drink or just to have a dinner outside, um, in some of like the local settings, and you'll start to see it as a place where it's uh, it's not just about like the safaris and these destinations, there's more to it to explore, um, and also, literally, just once you go on your first safari, it's like you'll you'll want to come back to africa for more, whether that's gorilla trekking the next time, going out to the winery regions in, you know, cape town and like, uh, stalin bosch area, like, or going to see, you know, the beautiful landscapes out in namibia, where, you know, the desert meets the ocean.
Speaker 1:It's like, go one time and I promise you you're gonna fall in love with it. Like you'll fall in love with the people, you'll fall in love with the landscapes, um, but yeah, um, I guess where people can find me. It's like, if you want to shoot me an email, it's just. Josh at cloud safariscom connected me on LinkedIn, um, instagram, whichever. I'm open and honestly, I just I love chatting with people, um, whether that's about, uh, africa, traveling around Africa, tech, Um, yeah, I'm open to, to open to conversations.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's great. Well, I can attest to that from having met you several times and getting to know you, as we have in the last several months, and I'm excited for all the success I think that is yet to come and the challenges that you guys will have to navigate on the way. So I'm sure you'll have more investors reach out to you after this conversation, and various partners as well. So I certainly wish you and the team every success for 2025 and beyond and I look forward to keeping in touch. I thank you again for being a proud sponsor of this series and I'm ready to go back to Africa myself. I've been twice and I want to make my third trip and I've been thinking about Botswana. I've realized and clearly I want to go to Rwanda as well.
Speaker 2:After speaking to Charles, I'm glad we addressed those misperceptions because there's so much to be explored. It's much safer than people realize. The infrastructure is there, obviously, the people are wonderful and it's just like it's such an extraordinary experience. So definitely don't delay on planning an African safari trip and check out what Josh and the team are building at Cloud Safaris. To work with him. Partner with him, but yeah, thanks again, josh. Partner with him, but yeah, thanks again, josh, and we'll look forward to keeping in touch.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Dan, Really appreciate it. And in Tanzania we say, which means you know you're very welcome, we will gladly host you wherever that may be Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa Make sure you come out there, We'll have our gin and tonics in the bush.
Speaker 2:Thanks so much for joining us on this latest episode of Travel Trends. I hope you've enjoyed the entire African Safari series as much as I have. It was great to close off this conversation with Joshua D'Souza from Cloud Safaris. I just wanted to say thanks again to Josh and the team for sponsoring this African Safari series. I'm also keen to get feedback from our listeners about whether we should continue to focus on African Safaris as part of season six, which starts in August of 2025. So feel free to send us an email at hello at traveltrendspodcastcom or post a message on any of our social channels, because we certainly read those as well.
Speaker 2:We actually have a two-part series coming up focusing on rail travel next, which is a category of travel I also love. I can't get enough of those great rail vacations TV shows. My mom loves them and she texts me if there's a great one on and I check them out as well, and I've always loved rail travel. So I thought we'd bring together the CEO of Rail Europe, bjorn, for a discussion, and also the CEO of Railbookers, frank Marini. So those are going to be coming up in the next week and then we're going to begin our next deep dive into the world of guided touring. We're going to be speaking to Colette, to Globus to Explore, and we're going to be looking at this fast growing sector that is outpacing independent travel very interestingly enough. So you can look forward to those conversations coming live in the next few weeks.
Speaker 2:Make sure that you are subscribed on the streaming platform of your choice Apple, spotify so that you don't miss an update when our new episodes go live. We typically launch every Wednesday for Travel Trends and we're now also launching every Thursday for our special hospitality series with Forbes Travel Guide. So be sure to check that out as well. And don't forget, we send out a monthly newsletter that you can sign up for at TravelTrendsPodcastcom, where we summarize all the latest episodes for the past month and we highlight our travel plans coming up. So be sure to check that out and reach out. If you're going to be at one of our next events, you can find the event section on our website as well, and I look forward to hearing from any of you that are going to be at those events so I can try to feature you in a future podcast. Thanks again for listening to the Africa Safari series. We look forward to you joining us on our next episode. Until then, safe travels.
