Southern World was formed in 1991, born out of Tourism Holdings Ltd (THL) in New Zealand, who operated Newman’s Holidays, Horizon Holidays and A&P Holidays. THL moved away from being a tour operator in 1996 and Southern World was sold to key management and became a privately owned separate business.
Richard Peate was the majority owner of Southern World, but in July 2001 David Armour, Peter Askin & Martin Horgan made an offer to buy into Southern World, having worked together at Newman’s with aspirations to be owners of Southern World, a business they loved and understood very well. Trevor Fernandes invested in the Australian arm of the business in 2003. Trevor’s family owns and operates Wildlife Safari, a very well established and respected East Africa luxury safari company, where Peter Askin had previously represented Wildlife Safari in the North American market and was instrumental with getting both companies introduced.
Richard Peate retired in 2013 and Trevor Fernandes and Tim Reid both became shareholders in New Zealand. Tim joined the Southern World team back in 2001 and is based in Auckland, while Martin Horgan is based just outside Christchurch in the South Island. With Trevor’s recent retirement, we have the same four shareholders for New Zealand and Australia. Southern World Fiji is owned equally between Southern World in Australia & New Zealand, with an office near Nadi, Fiji.
All four owners (David, Martin, Peter & Tim) are “hands on” involved in the entire Southern World business, each responsible for a different aspect, but all working with the common goal of putting our clients customers best interests first.
Southern World is a significant Inbound Tour Operator (ITO) or Destination Management Company (DMC) in Australia & New Zealand with a critical mass that ensures our buying power is competitive but without forsaking the personalised service for our trade customers and their clients while travelling in our destinations.
We are selective about the product and services we offer to our trade customers and their clients. We place a real emphasis on building long term partnerships with our suppliers. Something that is really important to us and our partners, is that Southern World works only with the travel trade. We don’t sell direct to the travel consumer and we’ve developed very strong, long standing relationships with our preferred suppliers, large and small, recognising them as our partners. Our prices, commensurate with our quality and service, are fair and reasonable. Our business is financially sound, fully funded and externally debt free. We retained our Sydney, Auckland and Nadi operations throughout the pandemic challenges and have recovered strongly. We also have sales offices in USA, with Peter Askin and Aidan Askin both in Chicago. Valerie May is responsible for sales in UK, Ireland & Europe, and is based in England while Ruben De La Fuente, who oversees our Latin markets, is based in Sydney.
Most importantly, our wonderful team are dedicated, hard-working, and always trying to learn more about the country they promote and sell. There is new product being offered for us to experience and review on a regular basis, but only those that we feel are suitable to be offered to the international market will be made available to our agents.