TEMPLE WORLD - Key Persons
Director of Temple World since 2008, Alice is the daughter of Temple World's founder, archaeologist David Price Williams. Growing up in Eswatini, she spent her weekends at her dad's dig in the lowveld and later accompanied many of their intrepid recce trips within the region in-between studies for her undergraduate and masters degrees in Scotland.
Having had an early taste for exotic travel, it was perhaps inevitable that Alice would follow her parents into the family business, but not before earning her travel industry spurs at high-street travel agency Trailfinders and then at the luxury tour operator Abercrombie and Kent. Under her directorship, Temple World has continued to lead the way in alumni and special interest group travel, whilst Alice has also added the tailormade brand ‘Sirocco Luxury Travel' to the business, arranging luxury private holidays worldwide. With travel as her all-consuming passion, before joining the company Alice spent years living and working in Australia and on both the East and West coasts of the USA. She has travelled overland through the whole of Southern Africa, most of South East Asia and the Indian subcontinent, right across America and into Mexico and throughout Australia and New Zealand. She loves to scuba dive and is lucky enough to have experienced some of the world's top sites, diving with manta rays in the Maldives, sting rays in Bora Bora, and whale sharks in Mozambique.
Alice continues to explore the globe as often as possible, trekking in Nepal, hiking the Inca trail in Peru, rafting the Zambezi in Zambia and snorkelling with wild dolphins in the Galapagos to name just a few of the trips she's managed to fit into her annual leave allowance. Now with three children in tow, she's keen for the family to explore together as much as possible, with her child-friendly holidays so far including the temples and tombs of Luxor, the mighty Irrawaddy River in Mandalay and the rose-red city of Petra, as well as exciting safaris to find leopard and wild dog in South Africa.
Alice and her team are always on the look out for new hotels and experiences to share with Temple World clients, with Alice's most recent inspection trips being Peru, Marrakesh, Sardinia, Crete and South India. On the bucket list are Rwanda and Colombia!
David is an archaeologist by training, and has worked on classical sites all over the Middle East, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt. He also lived and worked in Swaziland for ten years, leading an archaeological research project examining the impact of climate change on populations, and in Turkey, excavating the ancient site of Knidos on the Datca peninsula.
Since starting Temple World, David has led tours all over Southern Africa, with his favourites being Namibia and Botswana. He is a keen amateur photographer and knows the local and latin names of virtually every Southern African bird and plant. His own travels have taken him to India, Japan, Micronesia and the USA and Canada including New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Ottawa and Montreal. He speaks SiSwati and Turkish, and with his enviable archaeological expertise he is our ‘cultural consultant' for those who would like their holidays with and educational element.
Lia (short for Evangelia) hails from the beautiful Greek island of Corfu, although the UK has been her home since she first travelled here to take a modern languages degree in English, French and Italian, before she continued her studies with an MSc in International Business.
With a background in the airline industry working for Delta, Lia has explored Delta's network (and many other destinations) extensively for work and for pleasure, and has continued her explorations since joining Temple world with inspection trips, most recently to Cappadocia and Thailand. And of course despite bring a true anglophile, Lia is a font of knowledge on all things Greek! Over the years she has explored every nook and cranny of her homeland, from Athens and the Peloponnese to Crete and many other islands too numerous to name.
Lia loves working with our alumni clients and accompanies our tours as tour manager when schedules and group sizes permit. She particularly loved exploring South Korea and getting to know the lovely alums on our 2023 tour, and enjoyed staying on afterwards to experience Chuseok, Korean New Year, in Seoul.
Sue was born in cosmopolitan Alexandria, Egypt, then moved to Swaziland, Southern Africa, where she grew up on a remote farm. As an adult she has travelled extensively all over the African continent: North (Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt) East (Kenya and Tanzania) and South (Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique,Zambia and of course South Africa), with her most recent and so far favourite destination being Madagascar.
She has driven overland from London to Istanbul via Belgium, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia and Serbia) and Bulgaria, and her independent travels in Europe include Italy, France, Greece, Spain, Croatia and Malta, with dozens of visits to explore Turkey. Sue also knows and loves the Middle East, and even spent her honeymoon in Syria & Jordan. Her latest passion is for South America, with Ecuador and Argentina being favourites, but finds Antarctica the most outstanding.