Careers in specialist Africa travel
Expert Africa is a market-leading, award-winning specialist tour operator with team members, and travellers, from around the globe. Our main office is in Richmond, south-west London, and we have satellite offices in Cape Town, Namibia and New Zealand. Since Covid, the majority of our team have work from their own homes.
We have long grown steadily over the last 25 years, establishing a proven track record for high levels of African expertise and customer service. We’re in a strong position coming out of the Covid pandemic with the vast majority of our experienced team intact, backed by industry-leading systems and website.
We aim to steadily grow our team to include more enthusiastic and intelligent applicants with a genuine passion for Africa. Friendly, conscientious people who enjoy working cooperatively to deliver genuinely great service to our travellers.
Most of our team have started with us when they are graduates with 2+ years’ experience in African travel and have some good destination knowledge including first-hand experience of at least some of Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Tanzania and Kenya – including their attractions, safari camps, lodges and hotels.
We want real Africa specialists: people who can advise our travellers in depth from first-hand experience and with empathy on voice and video calls, by email and in person. Although we sell holidays, the heart of our work is about giving our travellers great advice and very efficient service; we don’t use or want the ‘hard-sell’ sales techniques used by some of our competitors.
All of our specialists work with our travellers from start to finish: from initial conversation and advice, through to creating quotes, refining trip plans, booking them, and acting on feedback when our travellers return. Highly efficient admin skills and great attention to detail are vital.
We expect our team to have excellent communication skills and a high level of literacy and numeracy, which we test during our application procedure.
Those with real talent for writing will find scope to develop that with professional input, ultimately contributing to content, and often also articles and even guidebooks. Those with an aptitude for numbers / systems will find plenty of scope working more closely with our technical side.
Our specialists get involved in all aspects of our business, from our core work with travellers, to PR and marketing, to managing our website and media channels. Those who are keen and have the ability and aptitude, will excel and we’ll give them the opportunity to grow.
Working responsibly is very important to us. We promote responsible tourism and aim not to sell anything which is not in the best interests of our travellers.
Speculative enquiries
Whilst we don’t currently have any vacancies, we always welcome ‘speculative enquiries’. We will hold the most promising ones on file until we do have vacancies, and occasionally we’re able to create a role for a very strong applicant.Strong candidates with relevant experience will often find this kind of approach worth their while, especially for those based within easy reach of training at our London office who are seeking ‘Assistant Specialist’ roles
African enthusiasts who feel that they have something to offer us should please email to us a scan of a full CV with a handwritten covering letter, addressed to careers@expertafrica.com
These should include full details of your educational background, your office experience (especially in the African travel industry), and your travel experience – as well as an explanation of why you feel that Expert Africa might be the right company for you.
Please supply an email address if you’d like us to reply.
Internships for students
We often have the capacity to accept one intern in the Expert Africa team at any one time. We focus on students who are undertaking this as part of a university course, typically a sandwich course in marketing or travel and tourism.These temporary posts for volunteers usually last 3-6 months, and the intern normally focuses on projects under the direction of the managing director. The posts are not salaried, but we offer a basic travel and subsistence allowance.
Internships are designed to help university students understand more about a busy travel business, and specifically marketing and the travel industry; they are not designed as a precursor to employment with Expert Africa.