About
Charly’s Desert Tours started operating in 1966. A long history of creating memories and of pioneering spirt has since made Charly’s Desert Tours an established and trusted brand. Ownership changed a few times over all these years but the brand stood the test of time. The name originates from the founding owner, Charly’s Gürtel, who was endearingly called “Charly the desert fox”. In October 2013, Gerald Kolb became the proud owner of the legendary Charly's Desert Tours.
Since 1997 Gerald has been working in the tourism industry, initially guiding private camping safaris in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This gave him the background knowledge of the tourism industry, and the experience in working with guests from many different cultures under many different and difficult circumstances.
Eventually working for one of Namibia's leading DMC's, Gerald became involved with planning and coordinating inbound incentive travel, event management and conferences for many years.
Changing circumstances awakened his old passion for guiding, which led to starting a small company called Travel Time, which offered interesting and informative half day tours in the Swakopmund area, where guests learn about the desert ecology and how the ancient cultures utilized many of the plants daily which are found in the Namib Desert. After successfully building up "The Desert Tour", Gerald started Travel Time's second product, the "Swakopmund City Tour".
When the opportunity presented itself to take over Charly's Desert Tours, Gerald combined Travel Time and Charly's Desert Tours and is now trading only under the grand old brand name of "Charly's Desert Tours". Today, Charly's Desert Tours the leading Swakopmund Day-Tour / activity operator and booking office. We no longer offer overland tours through Namibia, but instead became experts in the day tour market for the central coast. We operate a number of these day tours and activities ourselves, and we partnered with carefully selected suppliers for some of the activities. Today we are a true one stop booking office, offering a wide variety of experiences at the central coast. Come visit us in the Brauhaus Arcade, in Sam Nujoma Avenue, opposite Nedbank.
