Director Sales & Marketing – Peter Cummings

With over 20 years experience in the travel industry, Peter considers himself a travel industry survivor. His travel career has found him working for large mainstream travel companies in the UK and Australia before moving to North America.

Coming from a family of avid travelers, Peter always dreamed of visiting the most wild and wonderfully remote places. Since completing his degree in Marketing from Manchester he has spent a great deal of time exploring the real world. He gave up his sales job in the UK and went backpacking thru South America and Asia for a year.

His travel career started in sales where he quickly made his way to management as the sales manager for a leading tour operator in the UK. As time went on his search for new career challenges bought him to North America where he joined Exquisite Journeys as director sales and marketing for our adventure department. Excited at using a whole new set of business skills, Peter quickly took to his new role and with his team and developed several successful marketing programs for the North American market. Life at Exquisite Journeys has provided Peter with an outlet to exercise his creative talents at the same time provides leadership and experience to the companies expanding sales team.

Director Customer Relations – Judy Sinclair
After years of managing hotel sales and reservations Judy traded in her expertise for the rewarding career of selling travel and customer relations. With more than 35 stamps in her passport she loves telling people where to go and what to experience. For her nothing is more rewarding than getting a call or a postcard from a client who has just returned after having a trip of a lifetime, one that she made happen because of her good customer relations with all our support teams and destination management offices.
In her spare time Judy likes hiking and camping with her husband and two children. Some of her most memorable life experiences that she has had are while traveling in Peru, Costa Rica, Kenya and Australia. Ancient Cultures, diverse spiritual beliefs, Nature and Geography have always fascinated Judy and have drawn her to places that are steeped in mystery, adventure and beauty.
Living every day to the fullest, following her dream and never holding back is Judy’s motto and working for Exquisite Journeys allows her to work with like-minded souls...it also helps her connect with that inner feeling of sustaining our natural environment and working for conservation of nature and wildlife which she is very actively involved in while working with our ground operators around the world.
Judy started in the travel industry as a flight attendant, flying the friendly skies with a Canadian Airline in the early 80’s. After that she tried out a variety of jobs, only to find that what she really wanted to do was be in the hospitality business directly involved in travel. Judy now feels very much at home working with the interesting, fun loving and worldly people at Exquisite Journeys. And there are yet so many places and so many people she still has to travel to and meet with.

Manager Quality Control – Richard Jones

Richard gave up life on the road and showed up at Exquisite Journeys five years ago. After having worked in different capacities in the tourism business including a tour manager in South East Asia, South Africa and Australia he decided he wanted to get a steady job so he moved to North America and joined Exquisite Journeys to overlook our Quality Control department being responsible for all Special Groups and 'Tailor-Made Adventures' including Safari and FIT tours. He now manages the Quality Control department.

After finishing his Political Science degree he took off from Australia backpacking thru Asia, working and volunteering his way around Europe, Central and South America. Richard’s travel took him through two years in Asia, where he spent a year kicking around from country to country and then taught English and studied Chinese for a year in South China. After that he hooked up with a European Tour Operator escorting their tour groups thru Eastern and Southern Africa. He is one of the company’s many members of the 7 continent club. Richard’s favorite countries include India, Cambodia, Bhutan, Botswana and New Zealand. Richard’s most recent adventure was a six month working holiday thru Southern Africa and South America streamlining and overseeing the Quality Control of Exquisite Journeys ground operations in these countries.

Director Operations - John Summers

John Summers is a seasoned travel professional who has been planning, promoting and operating tours to countries like Africa, the Orient, Middle East and South Asia for the last 24 years. He is very well known in the tourism business and highly regarded for his integrity and quality of work. John's knowledge and experience has gained him tremendous respect within the hotel industry, with destination management companies and wholesale tour operators all over North America, Africa and Asia. He has also been instrumental in creating some very unique tours to worldwide destinations that are well received in the tourism industry. Having traveled extensively around the globe he has first hand knowledge of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. An avid Photographer and Nature lover, he has organized many photographic, Wildlife and Nature tour to exotic locations around the world for the last 8 years. He has also successfully organized large incentives, conferences, meetings and conventions to destination around the globe.

As a native of South Africa, John brings a lifetime of experience and knowledge to Exquisite Journeys. He has spent the past 15 years traveling extensively throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East where he has built loyal friendship and relationships with Lodge and hotel chains, destination management companies, tourist boards, airlines and many of the local communities. He visits each destination regularly to personally meet all his appointed suppliers, guides and lodge operators so that he can keep a watch over the quality of services being provided and how to better improve services and maintain the class of travel we provide to our customers. It is with this dedication that John ensures all his clients that Exquisite Journeys will always remains a distinguished travel provider making sure the comfort and satisfaction of his clients are first and foremost in terms of quality, and the uniqueness of the type of service provided by his company.

Australia Country Manager – Jim Slater

Coming from a family that is mostly associated with the Merchant Navy and are avid travelers, Jim always dreamed of visiting the most wild and wonderfully remote places. Since completing his degree in Business Management from the University of Queensland, South Australia he spent a great deal of his time exploring the real world. He used to spend long vacation in the South Pacific and South East Asia which reminded him that travel is his passion and this is where he really want to be in his life. Better late than never! He gave up his 9 to 5 job in corporate Banking and started a six month backpacking trip thru South America. On returning to Australia Jim took an Adventure Travel & Ecotourism Post-Graduate Degree and then spent a few years working for a charter company in Europe. His time from 1998 has been spent with Exquisite Journeys getting their Australia operation up and running. We are very fortunate to have some one like Jim as our country manager down under because of his sincere dedication and passion for travel.

Great Britain Country Manager – Tom Waters
Tom who is our UK country manager has a mission in mind, he wants to make each one of our UK client’s dreams to travel to their favorite exotic destination a reality. He is a highly regarded spokesperson for the travel industry and is regularly featured in trade and consumer publications. A graduate of Art and History, Tom has spent a good portion of his life traveling. From 1985 through 1992, he worked for an English travel company and traveled throughout Europe and Southeast Asia. He was instrumental in setting up the Exquisite Journeys UK operations upon his return to the UK from Asia in 1999, In addition to steering the direction of the company, he travels extensively and has taken more than 40 overseas trips since 1999. Now when Tom travels it is almost exclusively with his wife and two children, John and Laura, because he loves seeing the world through their eyes. Tom also enjoys incorporating his other interests, such as Art, conservation of wildlife and cooking, into his travels.

India Country Manager - S. Contractor

Germany Country Manager – Kurt Mahler
Kurt started Exquisite Journeys Germany office in 1996 with a passion to get travelers off the beaten track. He wanted to share some of the special places he knew and introduce them to different cultures and ways of life.
Kurt wanted to develop a style of travel that was all together different, he wanted travelers to become a part of country, and not just tourists looking at the destination. He wanted to have fun, meeting people, learning things, exploring, and doing stuff that they could never do at home. He wanted to travel by anything and everything, and stay anywhere and everywhere to get the real feeling of life in a foreign land.
Today Kurt has an office of more than 50 staff, and offers his clients over 200 different trips, to over 45 different destinations, in many different styles of travel. And yet his philosophy on travel is unchanged. Kurt feels that in these uncertain days it is all the more important that we get out and explore our wonderful world. It is through travel we can breakdown barriers build understanding and create a better and more caring world. And while doing this we can still have the time of our lives !!

Martin - Driver cum safari guide in Tanzania

Ms Miki Igarashi - Japan Tour Director
My name is Miki and I was born in Saitama Japan. Traveling is my top priority in life, and is something that really makes me feel happy and free because it gives me a chance to learn a lot about different people and different things each day, it also gives me the opportunity to see and understand the REAL world, and not the one that we only dream of and imagine.
So after spending 5 years of my life behind a computer designing web sites and taking just a few weeks of travel each year, I decided to change my life and make my DREAM COME TRUE!!!, I took a Tourism Guide Course plus some English Classes and decided to try my hand at travel. When I felt I was prepared I left my old job and went to Canada where I got a chance to learn the nitty gritty about handling tours and dealing with different types of people thru the guidance of my friends and collogues at Exquisite Journeys. Now I'm proud of myself, doing the best I can by showing our clients my beautiful country of Japan. My vision in life is to believe in yourself … and if you think you can do something better, JUST DO IT..

Ms Sue Lim - China Tour Manager
Since my first guiding assignment is 1995 traveling has become a lifestyle and a passion for me. I have traveled extensively thru South Asia and Indochina over the years, but my special destination is mainland China and Tibet which is home to me. The colors, vibrancy and Chinese culture continues to fascinate me after living there for three years. In addition to being a traveler, my skills span project management, business administration, alternative medicines (Yoga & Tai Chi), photography, teaching and creating crafts. I dream of touching the lives of all the lovely people I meet on every trip thru China traveling to the places I have yet to explore. I believe that traveling broadens your horizons, touches your life, creates a spirit of happiness and pushes your soul to grow. Being a tour manager with Exquisite Journeys allows me to share my passion for travel with all these lovely people I meet.

Ms Sandra Lynn - Thailand Tour Manager
Hi! My name is Sandra. I have always had an interest in other cultures and visiting places for as long as I can remember. My first big travel experience started out in the early 90’s when I traveled to four countries in South East Asia. Well, after that it has been non stop travel around Asia and Indochina, now I guess traveling is a bit of an addiction. I love to see how people in the world live, and it's really wonderful to get to know people from so many different cultures. I have a degree in Cultural Anthropology, and I have worked for many years with refugees and immigrants on the Thai, Myanmar border. I have backpacked through most of Thailand and Indochina and lived overseas for a year, working in Australia and Malaysia.
Now I am leading tours through Thailand and Laos and I love it. It’s a thrill for me to introduce people to new experiences and take them to places they have always wanted to go to, as well as places they have never dreamed of.
People ask me if I get tired of going to the same places all the time. My answer is Never !! This is part of my work and as I am always meeting new people it keeps my interest growing and my passion to travel alive.

Francis our Walking Samburu Guide

Leo - Guide in Chile

Alvardo - Tour Director in Peru