Who We Are: The Story Behind Savage Travel Co.

Savage Travel Co. didn't start in a boardroom. It started with a shared love of the ocean, travel, diving and the sort of adventures that usually make the best stories afterwards.

We're Shaun and Linn, the people behind Savage Travel Co. Between us we've spent years travelling, diving, working around the ocean and occasionally making questionable decisions in the name of a good adventure. Somewhere along the way, the idea for Savage started to take shape.

We wanted to create something a little different. Not another faceless travel company selling packages from behind a desk, but a community built around the kind of experiences we genuinely love ourselves. Great diving, wild places, good people and adventures worth remembering.

How Savage Travel Co. Began

The idea was pretty simple. We wanted to take the things we already loved doing and share them with other people.

For us, that means diving in incredible places, getting people face to face with the ocean rather than watching it through a screen, helping divers take the next step in their training and supporting conservation projects that are actually doing something useful.

We're not interested in ticking destinations off a list just for the sake of it. We'd rather spend time somewhere properly, dive with good local operators, meet the people who know the place and come home with a few stories that probably shouldn't make it into a brochure.

What We Do

Savage Travel Co. is built around the ocean, but we're not interested in doing just one thing.

We organise dive trips to some pretty special places, from shark diving in South Africa to exploring reefs, wrecks and wild coastlines. We also offer recreational diving courses, PADI professional training and opportunities to get involved with marine conservation.

Some people come with us simply because they want an incredible week of diving. Others want to take their diving further, become a professional or spend time working alongside conservation teams.

Whatever brings you along, the idea is the same. Good diving, good people and experiences that feel genuine rather than mass produced.

Meet the People Behind Savage

Two people with a shared love of travel, the ocean and getting slightly off the beaten track.

Shaun has been a scuba instructor since 1997 and has spent much of his working life around diving, boats, travel and hospitality. Originally from South Africa and now based in Sweden, he's equally happy underwater with sharks, exploring somewhere new or helping someone discover what they're capable of as a diver.

Linn is one of the biggest driving forces behind Savage Travel and very much the brains of the operation. A respected doctor, avid diver and passionate traveller, she's proof that people don't have to fit neatly into a single box. She's just as comfortable in a hospital as she is in a wetsuit, exploring a new country, hunting down great food and cocktails or helping turn one of our slightly ambitious ideas into reality. She also has the rather important job to occasionally question whether Shaun's latest "brilliant idea" is actually a brilliant idea.

Together, we're building Savage Travel Co. around the kind of experiences we'd choose ourselves. Adventurous, personal, professionally run and with plenty of good stories along the way.

Why Savage Travel Co.

There are plenty of companies that can sell you a dive trip. That's not really what we're trying to build.

Savage Travel Co. is about keeping things personal. We work with experienced local operators and people we trust and we choose experiences because we genuinely believe they're worth doing, not because they happen to fit neatly into a catalogue.

We care about good diving, proper training, responsible interaction with the ocean and supporting conservation where we can. Safety and professionalism come first, but that doesn't mean everything has to be painfully serious.

The ocean is supposed to be fun. Adventure is supposed to be fun. And if we can do both properly while leaving the places we visit a little better than we found them, we're heading in the right direction.

Adventure With a Purpose

The ocean has given us an enormous amount over the years, so giving something back matters to us.

Marine conservation is part of what Savage Travel Co. stands for. We're a 100% PADI AWARE partner and we want to make it easier for people to experience the ocean while also understanding why protecting it matters.

That might mean supporting conservation projects, taking part in citizen science, learning more about the animals and ecosystems we're diving with or simply becoming a more responsible diver.

We don't believe every adventure needs to save the world, but we do believe that the more time people spend genuinely experiencing the ocean, the more likely they are to care about what happens to it.

Where We're Going

Savage Travel Co. is still young, and that's part of what makes this exciting.

We're building it slowly and deliberately, adding trips, training and conservation experiences that we genuinely believe belong here rather than trying to fill a website with as many options as possible.

There are plenty of ideas scribbled down for the future. New destinations, new adventures and probably a few plans that Linn hasn't approved yet.

But the goal isn't to become the biggest travel company around. It's to build something we're proud of, work with good people and create the kind of adventures that we'd happily spend our own time and money doing.

If that sounds like your kind of travel, you're probably our kind of people.

Come Along for the Adventure

This blog is where we'll share more of what happens behind Savage Travel Co.

The destinations we explore, the animals we encounter, the people we meet, what we learn along the way and, inevitably, some of the things that don't quite go according to plan.

If you love diving, wild places, ocean conservation or simply getting out there and seeing what happens, stick around.

This is only the beginning.

See you somewhere out there. 🤿🌍