About
Thirty years of African travel.
Designed, not packaged.
Ascot Tours opened its doors in 1996 on the southern coast of South Africa. Thirty years on, we have moved every kind of guest across every kind of African geography. Ascot Private is the division that does it by air.
The Origin
A first family, a second car, and a road map.
Scott Edkins began Ascot Tours from Plettenberg Bay in 1996. The first guests were friends-of-friends; the first vehicle was a second-hand sedan; the first itineraries were drawn on tablecloths. Thirty years later the philosophy has not changed — only the geography we cover and the aircraft that carry it.
We grew because the work was good and the corrections were honest. The company that exists today is the accumulation of three decades of those corrections.
What We Believe
The destination is the work.
Everything else is logistics.
We do not chase trends. We do not pad itineraries. We do not charge for what should be included. The point of an Ascot Private journey is the place — the lodge, the river, the conversation, the round of golf, the morning with the trackers — and our work is to make sure the logistics never get in the way of any of it.
Why Private Air
Africa is enormous. The aircraft makes the geography work.
Cape Town to the Okavango is two thousand kilometres. Nairobi to Kigali is a thousand. Maun to Mahale is over land that has no road. A private aircraft does not just speed the journey — it makes whole categories of itinerary possible.
We do not own a fleet. We charter exactly the right aircraft for each leg from a network of operators we have worked with for two decades. The Cessna 210 for the bushveld, the King Air for the cross-continental, the Bell 407 when the moment asks for it.
The Fleet →The Six Principles
The work behind the work.
Six rules we wrote down a long time ago and have refined since. They do not appear on the brochure because they are how we work when no one is looking.
01
Restraint
We say less. The country says more.
02
Presence
Time on the ground in the right place is worth more than ground covered.
03
Patience
The best moments aren't scheduled. We design itineraries that leave room for them.
04
Discretion
Where you go, who you meet, what you see — none of it is for the algorithm.
05
Stewardship
The land, the animals, the people. We pay attention to all three, in that order.
06
Craft
Thirty years of corrections, not assumptions. The work is in the details you don't notice.
Thirty Years
The corrections compound.
We are the result of all of them.
We have made every mistake an African tour operator can make. We have learned which lodges are worth the lift and which are marketing. We know which guides have the experience and which have the bio. We know when to fly and when to drive and when to walk. The accumulated knowledge of three decades is the only thing that lets us do this work the way we do.
Awards have followed. World Golf Awards has named us Africa's Best Golf Tour Operator four times — 2016, 2017, 2021, and 2024. We are members of IAGTO, ATTA, SATSA, APTA, and Connections Luxury. None of it is the work; it is just acknowledgement of it.
The Founder
Scott Edkins.
Born in the Eastern Cape. Raised on the road between Cape Town and the Kruger. Founded Ascot Tours from a Plettenberg Bay study in 1996 — three decades before the company would carry two and a half thousand guests a year across ten African countries.
Scott still designs every Ascot Private journey personally until the lead Journey Designer has met the family. The work of the company is the work of the founder, and that has not changed since the second-hand sedan and the tablecloth itineraries.
- ·Founder & Managing Director, Ascot Tours since 1996
- ·Awarded Africa's Best Golf Tour Operator (World Golf Awards) — 2016, 2017, 2021, 2024
- ·Trustee, iThemba Projects (UK Charity 1137911)
- ·Member: IAGTO, ATTA, SATSA, APTA, Connections Luxury
- ·Reachable directly: scott@ascotprivate.com
Your Journey Expert
One person plans your trip.
That same person is on the line when something happens.
Every Ascot Private journey is built and managed by a single Journey Expert who knows the regions, the lodges, the guides, and your party. They are the same person who will field a call at 02:00 if a flight is grounded. They are the same person who will rearrange three days because your daughter discovered she wanted to see gorillas after all.
There are five Journey Experts at Ascot Private. They have between twelve and thirty years of African travel experience each. We will match you with the one whose specialism most closely overlaps with the journey you want to take.
The journey begins here.
Ten considered questions. Three fully priced itineraries. Five minutes.