There was a time when the word ‘holiday’ meant we travelled to a foreign place, usually somewhere hot and sunny, and did not do very much at all. The accent was on reclining, eating and drinking and, if you were in Africa, staring at processions of wild animals from the comfort of a Land Rover.
But that world seems to have passed into folklore. These days, we want much more out of our travel experiences — we want to be engaged and active and to take something emotionally and intellectually substantial home with us. The buzzword is ‘experiential’.
This is confirmed by Chris McIntyre, founder and managing director of Expert Africa. “A decade or two ago,” he says, “our travellers were content to visit Africa and passively see what was there. Now they’re much more demanding about the experiences that we can offer them in Africa — the holy grail is ‘real’ experiences, interacting with interesting or knowledgeable locals, which aren’t scripted or rehearsed in any way.”