Travelstart and SafariNow Partner with Discovery Miles

CAPE TOWN, 11 November 2020 - Travelstart and SafariNow have partnered with South Africa’s largest health insurance provider, Discovery Insure, to bring about a new payment platform. Discovery members and Vitality Health members with a Discovery Bank account can use their Discovery Miles to pay for flights and accommodation booked with Travelstart and SafariNow.

“Travelstart and Discovery share a common passion for their customers. This partnership will create a whole new opportunity for Discovery customers to spend their points to visit families and reunite with their loved ones,” says Vittorio Baraja, Chief Marketing Officer at Travelstart Group.

Travelstart’s vision of a convenient and affordable travel booking solution on one platform syncs perfectly with Discovery’s personalised rewards programme, allowing customers to conveniently redeem their Miles with Africa’s leading online travel agency.

“I strongly believe this partnership will help the local travel market. Unfortunately, limited availability and complex restrictions due to the impact of Covid-19 has led to price increases on certain flights. Being able to use Discovery Miles to reduce or completely cover flight costs will have a massive impact on people’s financial ability to travel. SafariNow’s offering is all about domestic travel and supporting local businesses by giving visibility to small lodges and establishments, something we strongly feel motivated to push.” adds Baraja.

“This is a great time to re-ignite the tourism industry and we look forward to enabling Discovery customers to travel and explore their own country,” affirms SafariNow’s CEO, Tom Williams.

SafariNow joined the Travelstart Group in 2017 and is South Africa’s largest accommodation booking website with over 30,000 listed properties in South Africa and 100,000 properties listed abroad.

Travelstart, which operates in nine African countries, will use this partnership to tap into Discovery’s global network of customers in other key markets.

About Travelstart

Travelstart was founded in Sweden in 1999 and pioneered online travel in Scandinavia with two basic principles: using technology to make travel purchases simple and offering customers the best price. In 2006, the company launched in South Africa and became a household name. Travelstart currently does business across several African countries as well as the GCC area with offices in Cape Town, Lagos, Cairo and Dubai. Travelstart has seen double-digit growth and profitability since inception and is backed by Amadeus Capital Partners and HarbourVest. For more information visit, https://www.travelstart.co.za/lp/about-us.

About Discovery

Discovery Limited is a South African-founded financial services organisation that operates in the healthcare, life assurance, short-term insurance, banking, savings and investment and wellness markets. Since inception in 1992, Discovery has been guided by a clear core purpose – to make people healthier and to enhance and protect their lives. This has manifested in its globally recognised Vitality Shared-Value insurance model, active in 24 markets with over 20 million members. The model is exported and scaled through the Global Vitality Network, an alliance of some of the largest insurers across key markets including AIA (Asia), Ping An (China), Generali (Europe), Sumitomo (Japan), John Hancock (US), Manulife (Canada) and Vitality Life & Health (UK, wholly owned). Discovery trades on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange as DSY.