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Omar Samra
Founder, Wild Guanabana; Co-Founder, Ala Keifak
Omar Samra is a tourism entrepreneur, record-breaking adventurer, motivational speaker, and analogue astronaut. He is the first Egyptian to summit Everest, complete the Seven Summits, and ski to both the North and South Pole.
Following a career in banking and investing, Omar founded Wild Guanabana, a leading adventure travel and trail development company, where he serves as CEO. He also co-founded Ala Keifak, a hospitality development and operating company specializing in boutique concepts rooted in nature, authenticity and a deep sense of place. For ten years, he led a children's charity in his late wife's honour, supporting 100,000+ kids in education and play.
Omar is a citizen-science astronaut candidate with PoSSUM, and the Vice-Commander of Lunares 3, a 15-day moon-analogue mission researching lunar habitability. He made three first ascents in Antarctica and named the peaks; he rowed 1,000km across the Atlantic Ocean before capsizing in a storm. His survival story, which also sheds light on the plight of refugees crossing dangerous seas, was made into a widely acclaimed documentary that first screened at the Cannes Film Festival.
Omar is a Goodwill Ambassador to UNHCR, a former Goodwill Ambassador to the UNDP, an ambassador for the Earthshot Prize, and an honorary ambassador to Nepal.
Being part of the inaugural TOURISE Awards meant sitting with a real question: what actually counts as excellence in this industry, beyond the noise of marketing and metrics. That question matters even more heading into this next cycle. Tourism is one of the few forces still capable of rebuilding trust between people and places, and the destinations doing that work deserve to be named, not just admired from a distance.