At the end of 2018, when Sarah Dusek sold Under Canvas — the now-iconic glamping company she co-founded and spent a decade building with her husband, Jacob Dusek — and stepped down from her role as CEO a year later, she thought she was finished creating travel companies.
“I was thinking we were done,” she said. “We went on a very long, very arduous journey building a travel company, and didn’t need to do that again.”
Dusek instead spent time working with female business founders, which inspired her to write “Thinking Bigger,” a book for women entrepreneurs that serves as a guide designed to help them craft powerful pitches and secure funding for their business ventures.
But, as it turned out, she wasn’t finished with her own projects, after all. This past March, Dusek and her husband launched Few & Far, an outdoor travel company that designs ultra-luxurious, safari-style itineraries in global destinations, with sustainability and local impact top of mind. Examples of the highly experiential, carbon-neutral trips include an Indian Adventure & Tiger Safari, an exploration of Chile From North to South and a Rwanda Gorilla Trek and Masai Mara Wildlife Adventure. The company also highlights the positive impacts of each itinerary, such as helping to protect tigers’ natural habitats in India or supporting rural communities in Kenya.
And, in 2025, the company will debut its first branded eco-lodge, Few & Far Luvhondo, an exclusive enclave with just six suites in Limpopo, South Africa. Located in the remote and biologically diverse Soutpansberg Mountains, the lodge will feature unique offerings, including an aerial cable car for viewing animals from above the treetops, farm-to-table dining with multi-course dinners in the bush, learning opportunities with the property’s conservation team and more.
So, what inspired her to get back in the game?
How do we use business as a vehicle for driving change, making a difference and solving some of the big problems that we face?
“I’ve been working in Africa for five years now, helping businesses solve big-world problems,” Dusek said. “How do we use business as a vehicle for driving change, making a difference and solving some of the big problems that we face? It made me a little itchy to get back in the ring and see if we can do something even more impactful than we had done previously.”
Sarah Dusek co-founded Under Canvas before starting Few & Far.
Credit: 2024 Few & FarBetween that work, taking small groups of women out on experiential journeys and thinking deeply about regenerative travel — which she describes as “giving back to the world, rather than just trying to limit the damage that we do” — the idea for Few & Far was born.
Here, Dusek shares more about the new travel brand.
To start, can you tell us about your goals with Few & Far?
The whole genesis of the company is that it exists to positively impact the planet — everything we do is about trying to regenerate the planet. So, we’re doing two things: We’re taking people on experiential journeys around the world that connect them with partners who are doing the hard work of investing in the environment, or in people, or both. And now, we’re building our own lodges that are intricately intertwined with conservation initiatives. The essence of what we’re doing is creating journeys for people to immerse themselves in the wilderness and nature, and leave a lasting impact, because their travel dollars were invested there.
And what is the travel experience like?
We are five-star, high-touch, highly experiential. And the reason for that is actually wanting to create a low footprint. We’re not trying to engage in mass tourism or volume tourism. We’re intentional, thoughtful, highly curated and very private.
We’ve got a whole variety of itineraries that work for individuals and small groups to have experiential journeys around the world, on what we call our safari-style journeys. So, guests are usually staying in eco-lodging or some kind of very sustainable lodging and engaging with partners who have a similar ethos [to ours].
Few & Far Luvhondo will feature just six rooms.
Credit: 2024 Few & FarTell us more about the experience clients can expect at Few & Far Luvhondo when it opens next year.
When you stay at our lodge, there are just six rooms. It’s very small, very boutique. Guests will have their own private guide and the ability to explore 100,000 hectares [about 247,105 acres], which is about the size of Singapore, where they might not see another soul.
They'll get to be conservationists for a day if they would like to. They'll get to have up-close-and-personal, weird and wonderful wildlife experiences. They'll be able to enjoy our one-of-a-kind, solar-powered cable-car experience, which will allow them to traverse silently through the bush and get up close with some of our favorite wildlife. And they'll be able to get out on foot, exploring, hiking and biking in the African wilderness, which is a fairly rare phenomenon. So, it'll be a very special, very unique experience.
A unique cable-car setup will allow for aerial wildlife viewing.
Credit: 2024 Few & FarThe lodge also plans to sequester more than 100,000 tons of additional carbon from the atmosphere by planting and rewilding the mountain — how will its regenerative mission play into the guest experience?
We can all do our best to cut emissions, but that's not going to be enough at the end of the day. We have to actively be doing the work to sequester carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. And we are really keen to not just be a travel company this time; not just creating really extraordinary experiences, but also connecting people with how we're going to [help] save the planet. So, that's what I'm hoping our guests will experience.
We’re not at a place yet where people are being led in their travel experiences by looking to have an impact. That’s secondary. But what I’m hoping we’ll be able to do is connect some of the dots.
We’re not at a place yet where people are being led in their travel experiences by looking to have an impact. That’s secondary. But what I’m hoping we’ll be able to do is connect some of the dots. And that's what I found with building my first company. We were able to [demonstrate] what leaving no trace looked like, what low water usage looked like, practically and physically experiencing it so people realized, “Oh, this is great, and I can have a wonderful experience [doing it].”
I think our mission is to engage our consumer in that, but I think people come to us to have extraordinary experiences in the wilderness. Connecting the dots for folks with carbon and conservation, in particular, will be a big educational piece of our puzzle. All our guests, for example, will be charged a carbon-offset fee. It’s just part and parcel of what it costs to come stay with us. But more than that, 90% of the fee that people pay is going into conserving this extraordinary place that our lodge is going to call home.
What’s the best way for travel advisors to work with Few & Far?
We have a section on our website that’s just for agents, with extra information that they need to sell our product to their clients, and a contact button so they can reach out. We would love to work with agents who are doing the hard work of putting guests in Africa every single day.
