Johnny Prince, a tea drinking African safari nut, is a travel-tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Timbuktu, a Cape Town based travel company. Born and raised in England, Johnny’s obsession with Africa started whilst spending a year abroad at the University of Cape Town in 2004. After graduating, he started a tour operator company specialising in trips to wild corners across Africa which he ran for eight years.

Seeing the shift in the travel industry and the growing desire for people to have more involvement in their journeys, Johnny founded Timbuktu, an Africa travel company revolutionising the way people plan their safaris by handing over complete control to the traveller, saving them time and money along the way.

JOHNNY'S FAVOURITE SITES

Explore Sideways - One of my favourite places in South Africa is the Cape Winelands near Cape Town, where I currently live. Explore Sideways is a great website that offers amazing tours into some of the best areas of the winelands, complete with a specialist guide who escorts you into the hidden gems of Cape Town, Stellenbosch, Franschhoek and Constantia.

SoundCloud - When I sit down and focus on work, I love to put on an awesome playlist on the SoundCloud music website. You can search artists and play hours of incredible tunes that help me focus, or relax, or whatever it might be.

Maptia - I get lost in Maptia for hours. It’s a community of photographers and writers who tell amazing stories. The photography on the site is amazing, and the editor’s story picks are always incredible. You can explore the places and topics that inspire you most as part of our thoughtful community.

VentureBurn - This is a great space to learn about what’s new in the tech and startup space in Africa, and I’m always checking to see new ideas and businesses in a similar industry. They wrote a great story about Timbuktu recently.

Touriocity - A fantastic new website that offers amazing guided tours of the world’s greatest cities. They have been at it for six years, and have some of the best guiding talent. The site is also wonderful and easy to use.

Hipmunk - I often use Hipmunk to plan my overseas flights, and they represent results chronologically by time of day on a single page. Flights are ranked by price, schedule, and "agony", a score based on factors such as duration of the flight and number of stops. It’s a fun and unique way of planning a trip.

Favourite App... Strava - This is my favourite app at the moment. It’s like a social network for active people. You can exercise, track your route on Maps, your heart rate, time, distance etc.. and then log your session on Strava. You can then see what your friends have been up to and motivate yourself further.

July 2016