Discover the World Ltd began in 1983, offering holidays to Iceland and the Arctic region. For nearly a quarter of a century we have continued to grow and develop into one of the UK’s leading specialist tour operators and have proudly introduced a selection of refreshingly different wildlife and wilderness holidays, to a multitude of worldwide destinations.

Today the company is still owned, managed and run by both Clive Stacey and Mark Leaney who founded the company nearly three decades ago. We currently have around 60 dedicated and hardworking staff and travel industry professionals, all with diverse backgrounds and experience which are a tremendous asset. Several members of our team include Icelandic, Finnish, Swedish, New Zealand, Bulgarian, Italian and German backgrounds. Our collective experience of travel is vast and our team have travelled extensively around the world. As such, we are able to offer first-hand knowledge of each destination.

We currently have six specialist programmes and Iceland is still our number one destination. In recent years we have introduced a number of “destination” based programmes including New Zealand which was launched in August 2001 and has proudly won a number of awards including winner of the “Best On-line Product” for 2003, 2006 and 2007 as well as New Zealand Travel Specialist of the year 2007 at the New Zealand Travel & Tourism Awards. Other successful programmes include Polar Journeys, Riding in Iceland and Living Planet, our dedicated student travel programme.

Our Awards

We are excited to announce that we were awarded twice in the Wanderlust Readers' Travel Awards 2011, receiving the bronze for 'Top Tour Operator' and the bronze for 'Top Website'.

Our Iceland & Greenland 2009/10 brochure has won 'Best Brochure' award in the Guardian and Observer Travel Awards 2009.

Discover the World is the largest UK operator to Iceland and its specialist New Zealand programme has won numerous awards including winning Tourism New Zealand’s ‘Travel Specialist of the Year 2007’. Our New Zealand website has also won ‘Best On-line Product’ three times and the brochure has been Highly Commended on three occasions.

Reinforcing our reputation for quality throughout all our specialist destination programmes, we have also won numerous other tourism awards over the years, including consistently receiving a Highly Commended for Best Tour Operator from Wanderlust magazine readers. In 2008 we were placed joint 4th in the Top Tour Operator category.