Our Team
Martin Wiest
Chief Executive Officer
Martin Wiest
Martin started out as a tour guide and bus driver for Welcome Tourism Services in the ‘80s. Due to his strong leadership skills, he enthusiastically moved up the ranks to GM, Divisional Director, and COO for Tourvest Inbound Operations.
Martin is now the Chief Executive Officer of Tourvest Destination Management and is a member of the Tourvest Executive committee. Martin’s wealth of knowledge and experience, coupled with his understanding of the business are well known and respected throughout the industry.
Martin is an avid scuba diver and skier, and says that he enjoys experiences over things.
“Some people spend their cash on things, I like to spend mine on experiences with my family”
Did you know: Our CEO is well travelled, and did 66 long haul flights in 2017, resulting in 208 160km travelled!
Matthew Nicholls
Chief Financial Officer
Matthew Nicholls
Bryan joined Tourvest Destination Management in 2007 as the Procurement Director and shortly after joining, was handed additional operational responsibilities within the TDM central infrastructure. In 2011, Bryan was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of TDM BASE (Business and Sports Events) division which housed the incentive, conference and sports travel businesses.
It wasn’t long until he found his passion for sport and developed the SA Rugby Travel business in partnership with the South African Rugby Union. Bryan relocated to the UK with his family in 2019, where he was appointed as Managing Director – Europe within the Sports Travel division. His future aspirations include diversifying the European business across Sports Travel and Leisure and for the European business to be a meaningful travel operator within the European territory based on financial performance and a reputation for best-in-class delivery.
Felicity Vieira
Chief Marketing Officer
Felicity Vieira
Felicity, fondly known as Felix, has worked for Tourvest Destination Management for 19 years.
She has been in the tourism industry for 28 years and has had various sales, marketing and business development roles. She has an incredible passion for the industry and the country she lives in. Her idea of escapism is spending quality time with her husband and two children in the bush. She loves being a mom and a work/life balance is very important to her.
Her other pastimes include delicious food (especially of the Italian variety), excellent wine, and spending time in her garden. If she could have one person over for dinner it would be Richard Quest an English journalist and CNN International anchor.
Dieter Holle
Chief Information Officer
Dieter Holle
Dieter is surprisingly not a born tech geek, but rather a CIO that evolved out of the travel industry and acquired his tech knowledge whilst working with real-world travel-related technology opportunities. Having trained and worked in Germany, and then drawn back to sunny SA, Dieter is passionate about Africa, especially its wildlife and landscapes. Boredom does not feature; in fact he’d be well off selling his couch, as there is no time to sit down with a vast array of interests ranging from aquariums, gardening, anything tech-related and travel to places which are remote and difficult to reach.
To Dieter, the travel industry, in combination with technology, is an extremely rewarding space, with a dose of mostly positive subject matters making up ‘a day’s work’.
Martin Botha
COO – Sense of Africa South Africa
Martin Botha
Martin served as a member of the SATSA National Executive Council for 2 terms (2014 -2016). His broad exposure and hands on experience ranges from IS Manager, Financial Director and Managing Director of Welcome Tourism Services. Martin’s passion for the tourism industry is as much personal as it is professional. His enjoyment of beautiful places, the fine arts, as well as passion for people, often intertwine work life and home life and he wouldn’t have it any other way.
Paul Brinkmann
COO – Sense of Africa Africa
Paul Brinkmann
Paul has worked in the tourism industry for 15 years – and has spent all of those 15 years working at Sense of Africa, Namibia! Paul loves to travel for leisure and for work, and enjoys quality time with his family, and playing sports. He says that he “plays sport for winning – winning is everything!”
Paul is also unwittingly enthusiastic about old cars, claiming that “for whatever reason all my cars are old – Landrover shortwheel base 1975, Jeep Wrangler 2004 and Toyota Landcruiser 2004”.
Sabine Blehle
CEO GoVacation Africa
Sabine Blehle
Sabine has been in the tourism industry for 30 years. Sabine completed an apprenticeship of 7 years in Germany, after which she relocated to South Africa in 1997. Sabine has been at Tourvest Destination Management for 23 years. She loves to travel and explore Africa in particular, and is also an avid student.
She is a qualified NLP practitioner, and is studying further in this field.
Illana Pereira
COO – Sports & Leisure South Africa
Illana Pereira
After 15 years as part of the TDM family, Illana is looking forward to her new role as COO of Sport, Leisure and B2C. Illana started as a Business Development Senior Consultant at Welcome Tours, and took all she learnt in the incentive and groups environments and moved over to TEAM Destination Management, where they went on to create a phenomenal project – in the form of 3 Football World Cup activations around the world, as well as various other events.
Illana has been responsible for the Sports and Leisure division for the past few years now, and loves the excitement the environment provides.
Looking forward, Illana is involved in a few new projects including the creation of annualised revenue in the sport environment, and spearheading this is E-Prix Travel, Formula E, for which we are the exclusive Global Travel Partner. Illana and her team have started the local outbound scuba product, Pure-Travel Scuba, which will be an addition to sport, and is revolutionising the youth environment with new, exciting tours and partners, as well as new sport tournaments and an ever-growing and expanding GSA division.
Then, as it is a Tourvest directive to manage every booking channel, Illana is launching a B2C brand called Journeys through Africa, through the optimisation of existing and new databases and through which we sell TDM’s very own product.
The bigger projects in SA Rugby Travel continue – being official for RWC 2023 in France and now also Rugby 7’s 2022 in Cape Town. Illana is a firm believer in adding value in all that you do, believes in Tourvest, and believes wholeheartedly that we are unstoppable and that we can achieve anything we put our minds to. Illana looks forward to her continued journey with TDM and Tourvest.
Bryan Coetzee
COO – Sports & Leisure Europe
Bryan Coetzee
Bryan joined Tourvest Destination Management in 2007 as the Procurement Director and shortly after joining, was handed additional operational responsibilities within the TDM central infrastructure. In 2011, Bryan was promoted to Chief Operating Officer of TDM BASE (Business and Sports Events) division which housed the incentive, conference and sports travel businesses.
It wasn’t long until he found his passion for sport and developed the SA Rugby Travel business in partnership with the South African Rugby Union. Bryan relocated to the UK with his family in 2019, where he was appointed as Managing Director – Europe within the Sports Travel division. His future aspirations include diversifying the European business across Sports Travel and Leisure and for the European business to be a meaningful travel operator within the European territory based on financial performance and a reputation for best-in-class delivery.
Martijn Mellaart
COO – Sense of Oceans & Franchising
Martijn Mellaart
After having run his own DMC since 1998, Martijn had the experience and expertise to join TDM with the task to develop the new business unit Sense of Oceans. But with the pandemic putting a lot of strain on travel, this forced him to concentrate on alternative models to keep the business growing. He spent over 2 decades in the small to medium size DMC space and instantly understood the needs of DMC operations around southern Africa when the pandemic hit, which was low income and remaining relative high costs.
In 2020 he launched the business unit e.DMC, and now, has developed a TDM Franchise model where we work in partnership with destinations not yet covered by TDM.
We are very excited to announce our first project on 1 October 2021, Sense of Oceans Madagascar. The next few years for Martijn will include rolling out e.DMC throughout Southern Africa and creating a vast network of loyal DMC’s. On the TDM Franchise side – he aims to make a positive impact on growing TDM’s African footprint in areas like Rwanda and Ethiopia as well as West Africa.