Why Delfino

Delfino Tours was founded in Caracas in 1998. We have designed and operated journeys across Venezuela through the boom, the quiet years and the reopening — and we still do, with the same office, many of the same people and a far better toolbox.

What we are

An inbound tour operator and destination management company. We own or contract every service in your client’s itinerary in Venezuela — internal flights, lodges, posadas, guides, boats, transfers, permits, concierge — and take responsibility for it operating exactly as sold. We handle FIT and group travellers, and we work exclusively through the travel trade.

Where we operate

From Caracas and the Caribbean cays to the Gran Sabana, the Orinoco Delta, the Amazon and the Andes. Those are the destinations we publish; because every programme is built to order, we will operate anywhere in the country a client asks for. We hold extensive hotel allocations in every major destination so that space exists in high season, and we operate our own lodges in Canaima and posadas in Los Roques — the two places every Venezuela itinerary depends on.

Who we work for

Tour operators, wholesalers and travel designers in Europe, the UK and the Americas; luxury concierge networks; yacht agents and private offices.

We do not discuss our clients. We can describe the work. Ground logistics for film production, including the location research for the film Up. Large private yachts: shore programmes on the Caribbean coast and in Los Roques, an exploration cruise along the coast of Falcón, and the passage of a megayacht up the Orinoco Delta as far as Puerto Ordaz. Ground organisation for scientific expeditions, among them the speleological work on the sinkholes of Sarisariñama. And, in between, several thousand couples who simply wanted to see Angel Falls.

Our guides

A programme in Venezuela is only as good as the person leading it. Our roster is not a pool of badge-holders: naturalists who have published on the tepuis, architects and art historians who read Caracas building by building, biologists and ornithologists, and mountain guides with decades on Bolívar and Humboldt. Several of them work with us and with nobody else.

A birder gets an ornithologist. A collector gets an art historian. A family gets someone who is good with children at 3,000 metres. For the tepui, Amazon and Delta programmes we call on the people who guide scientific and film expeditions, not on the general excursion pool.

Some of the names on our list are the ones you read in the literature on the Guayana Shield, and several of our team have been with Delfino for more than twenty years. We publish neither. Trade partners see the full profiles in Mango — languages, specialities, and the expeditions and productions each has worked on — so you know who will meet your client at the airstrip before you sell the programme.

The same people, season after season

Several of the people you will deal with have been at Delfino for more than twenty years. In Venezuela the practical answer to a question changes from one season to the next: which airstrip is open, which pilot flies when the cloud lifts off Auyantepui, which posada is worth the extra night. That knowledge is not written down anywhere. It is held by people, and our people have stayed.

We are a small company and, after this long, something close to a family. The consultant who answers your first e-mail is the one who will still be there when your client rebooks.

How we work

Every partner has a named consultant who speaks their language. Quotes come out of the same system that runs our operations, so what you sell is what gets operated. Net rates, programmes and statements live on Mango, our partner portal. Operations run 24 hours a day, seven days a week while your clients are in the country, with a duty officer reachable on WhatsApp.

Licensed, permitted and insured

Delfino is a registered Venezuelan tour operator — RTN 04380, licence VT 2109 — and we hold the permits required to work inside the national parks: Canaima, Los Roques, Henri Pittier, Mochima. Not every ground operator in Venezuela does, and it is the first thing worth checking. We carry public liability insurance for our own operation, and the airlines, charter companies, lodges and transport firms we use carry their own, which we verify. Ask and we will send the certificates, the licences and the supplier list for your due diligence before you contract us.

Our group

Delfino is part of a DMC group with sister companies in Colombia (Colombian Journeys, founded in Bogotá in 2007), Chile (Chile Concept) and Panama (Panama Journeys). One contract and one point of contact can cover the whole region.

The people you will talk to

A small, senior team in Caracas — booking consultants, an operations desk and management — plus guides and crews we have worked with for decades. Ask us for a video call; we like to put faces to names before the first booking.