10 Years On
Dear Friends,
A decade ago, I started Sarah James Travel with a simple belief: that a great trip to Africa isn't just booked, it's designed.
That the difference between a good journey and an unforgettable one lives in the details, the right camp at the right moment, the unexpected experience nobody else thought to include, the story you'll still be telling ten years from now.
Today, 754 trips later, I find myself sitting with enormous gratitude.
Because none of those 754 trips would have happened without you. SJT has never advertised. We have never needed to. This business has been built on the trust of people who came back, and people who sent their friends, their families, and their colleagues our way. Every single client we have ever worked with arrived through a personal recommendation. That is not a statistic I take lightly. It is the thing I am most proud of.
So before anything else —
Thank you.
Genuinely. You gave us the rarest thing in business: your trust, your faith, and your most precious weeks of the year. We have never forgotten what that means.
Africa is more exciting than ever
I have travelled across this continent for over 25 years now, cutting my teeth working in camps in Zimbabwe and Botswana, as well as spending many years with a London-based Africa tour operator, before starting SJT in South Africa ten years ago.
And I can say with complete conviction: this is the most exciting moment I have known. New camps are opening in places that weren't accessible before. Conservancies are expanding. Extraordinary operators are doing work that is changing what it means to travel here — for guests, for communities, for wildlife. Every season I find something that makes me catch my breath.
And the travellers coming to us are changing too. People want something more considered, more personal, more meaningful. They want to share these experiences with the people they love, bringing children, parents and grandparents, celebrating a milestone or simply finding the time to gather as a family somewhere extraordinary.
They want a trip that couldn’t have been designed for anyone else. That is exactly what we do, and we intend to do it better than ever.
We are growing.
Our team is expanding — from our office in the Cape Winelands just outside Cape Town, which remains at the heart of everything we do, to a new marketing presence in the UK. We now have a new team member dedicated to looking after our clients once their trips are confirmed, whilst I still remain at the heart of designing each journey. We are also growing a wonderful client base in America and reaching more travellers beyond.
But growth, for us, will always mean the same thing it always has: more time, more care, and more imagination given to each journey we create. The size of the business will change. The way we work will not.
Something new.
To mark this milestone, we have given SJT a fresh creative direction — the new visual identity embraces the spirit of the trips we organise, the stories we tell and the places that inspire us. The new design is rooted in the idea and the spirit of keeping a journal and written correspondence. The idea that we capture and share the stories and experiences that are important to us, and also shape us. We believe a trip to Africa should create the shared memories and stories of a lifetime.
Starting this month…
… I will be sharing a monthly ‘LETTER FROM SARAH’ — a regular dispatch from me and the team. The camps, the moments, the people, the ideas that are shaping how we think about travel on the continent of Africa. I hope you enjoy reading it.
There is a line I come back to often: the best journeys are the ones that change you a little. I think that's true of building a business too. SJT has changed me — shaped how I see Africa, how I think about designing trips, how I understand what people are really looking for when they ask us to plan a trip.
Here's to the next ten years. There is so much I want to show you.
With love,